Do Not Go Gentle
by Dracoisalooker76
Summary: "We call it the arena. It's where you go to die." Modern Day AU. Everlark
1. Part I

_In honor of my fiftieth story published on Fanfiction, I wanted to do something special. So, I decided to do something I've never done before – a modern day Hunger Games fic and an allegory. So, we end up with this: a modern day allegory to Katniss and Peeta's romance through the Hunger Games trilogy. I debated whether splitting the parts into chapters, but I thought it worked better all together. This is Part I of a three parter that I hope comes across as mildly familiar but completely different, if that makes sense._

_Enjoy!_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

* * *

**Do Not Go Gentle**

* * *

Part I

_But try not to judge me_

_'Cause we've walked down different paths_

_But it brought us here together_

_So I won't take that back_

-Thompson Square, _Glass_

Panem Children's Hospital is an architectural masterpiece. The brick building has no edges, is nearly a complete circle, and looks like an oversized tidal wave. The cement awning over the ambulance bay is a rainbow with clouds at each end. If someone had told me they had plucked it right off a Saturday morning cartoon and inserted it into it's current location, I would probably believe them. It makes me wonder how many parents take comfort in the exterior when they bring their children here for the first time or if their only concerns are the white-coated doctors and sweet smiling nurses that litter the hallways.

I decide to finally walk inside and see if the outside is any indication of the interior decoration. I'm not disappointed when it looks like a crayon box exploded.

While slathering my hands with sanitizer, my eyes fall on a thin blonde volunteer dragging a plastic wagon with a bald toddler inside. She's attached to an IV pole that drags alongside the wagon and the little girl claps happily. I know she's smiling even through her facemask and her parents, who are dutifully following, look thrilled. It makes me smile a little, knowing that the volunteer is making the girl giggle, but it doesn't replace the churning in my stomach, knowing exactly why the little one is here in the first place.

I take a deep breath and try to take a step toward Information but my feet are stubbornly planted on the rainbow-tiled floors. One step. Two step. Three step. And finally I make it to the desk. The woman sitting there is just as colorful as the walls around her. Her suit is lime green. Her nails are the color of raspberries. Her nametag, which is twice the normal size, is bubblegum pink on the counter.

_Effie Trinket, receptionist._

She sets the phone down and smiles up at me. "Yes?"

"I'm here to volunteer?"

Her eyes light up as if I've said the most exciting thing she's heard all day. Her hands fly up in the air and she goes to her computer, her long nails typing furiously away at her keyboard before looking back up at me. I think she'd be a beautiful woman, probably in her earlier thirties, if she didn't look so much like a clown.

"Peeta Mellark?" she asks.

I nod. That's me.

Her fingers go back to typing furiously away at her keypad while the phone wails around her. She sighs heavily and holds the call, and then another, before going back to whatever she has to do to sign me in. I have to admit, her job seems terrible dealing with visitors left and right as well as a wailing telephone. She must be looking for a promotion. Or a raise.

"Do you know where you'll be volunteering?" she asks, attempting to make small talk as she pages the volunteer coordinator to come get me.

"They're just showing me around today."

Effie nods and smiles at me. "Well, I would say neonatal, that's where everyone wants to go. I, in fact, would love to be the receptionist up there."

I just smile. I tell her it sounds wonderful because it seems that Effie isn't one to argue with – she looks like she deals with crabby people too often. However, I don't think I'd do well with neonatal. I'm the youngest of three boys. Don't get me wrong, I love kids, but holding someone's newborn seems like a bad idea for someone who's never been around babies before. Then again, I've never really been around sick kids before either.

"Peeta?"

I turn as Effie's phone screams again. She picks it up with a plastered grin and the fakest cheery voice I've ever heard. The woman standing at the desk beside me is tall and beautiful. I'm not short but she towers over me in her black heels. She has creamy mocha skin and a smile that instantly warms her. Unlike Effie, she seems to love her job.

"Hi, I'm Portia," she says, taking my outstretched hand in a shake before motioning me to follow her. "How are you?"

We exchange pleasantries and talk about the weather. It's unseasonably warm for October. Once we're inside the elevator, Portia smiles again and tells me where we'll start the tour.

The first place she shows me is the reading room. Inside there is a girl with blond hair in two braids reading a picture book to a group of little ones. Some look healthy and are dressed in street clothes, obviously siblings, and others have facemasks or IV poles and are in their pajamas. They are all sitting at her feet, mesmerized by her tale. She looks a bit young to be a volunteer – since the minimum age requirement is sixteen – so I wonder which one of the little kids is her sibling.

After that, Portia guides me to a large rec room. At a long table, little kids are coloring with two girls – one with dark hair and skin, similar in age to the young blond girl, and one with red hair and foxlike features. A tall dark-skinned boy helps a preteen with no hair kick soccer ball shaped pillows into a net against the far wall. I can do the rec room. I can draw and I play soccer at school. This room seems like a win-win.

Portia shows me a few more areas and then she guides me to her office to get the volunteer uniform, a simple navy collared shirt with the hospital logo on the left side.

"So, why did you decide to volunteer?"

My story is too long and drawn out to tell her. Parts of it are just plain stupid – like the part with my mother. Other parts are too personal – such as the picture of the bird I used to have hanging in my room. So, instead of divulging what could be hours of story onto the coordinator, whose desk clearly demonstrates that she has better things to do, I smile.

I tell her honestly, "I want to make a difference in someone's life."

Portia grins and hands me the shirt. "Good answer."

* * *

The second week of kindergarten, one of my classmates stopped coming to school. I didn't really notice all too much because, at five, I was concerned with having the best spot at the coloring table and beating my new best friend Hersh Donner to the playground at recess. However, in music class, when our teacher called out attendance and Katniss Everdeen was absent, I wondered where she was.

Delly Cartwright, who I had known since we were babies and hadn't realized was friendly with any of the girls in our class because she hung around Hersh and me, smiled up at our teacher. "She's sick today."

It was two days later that our kindergarten teacher sat us down and told us that Katniss was very sick, so sick that she wasn't going to be in school for a very long time. Then, she handed out a letter for us to bring to our parents and stuck a jar on her desk.

"This jar," she said, "is Katniss's Jar. We're going to collect any spare change and donate it to her family. So if you have any extra lunch money one day you can plop it right in this jar."

"Maybe I'll get sick," Hersh whispered while our teacher continued passing out the letters. "I could buy a lot with everyone's extra lunch money."

I laughed and thought about it as well. A day or two out of school and suddenly Katniss was getting money? It seemed like a great idea.

Only, I realized that Katniss never seemed to come back.

"Do you think what she has is catchy?" I asked Hersh and Delly while we played on the playground one day a month later at recess. Our teacher had told us to play extra hard because when we got back we were having art time in which we would be writing letters and making get well cards for Katniss. Now I didn't care about the money she was getting – I didn't want to be out of school for a month!

Delly shrugged. "My momma said she's gonna lose all her hair."

Hersh hesitantly raised his hand to his head. "I like my hair."

My card featured a bird on the front. I figured if she was losing all her hair she wouldn't want a picture of a puppy or kitten, since they had hair, and a bird had feathers instead. I didn't finish my card and I asked our teacher if I could finish it at home that night and give it to her in the morning. She seemed thrilled that I was so eager to work on it.

So, later that night, I sat at the decorator's table while my dad showed Rye how to ready the ovens at our family's bakery. He was nine turning ten and our mother thought it was high time he learned how to help. Of course, I noticed that my mother was nowhere to be found and was probably at home with her feet up watching the television but I didn't say anything. Dad had Leaven beating dough as he instructed Rye, and I sat at the table with my crayon box and Katniss's card. I didn't really know what to write in it though.

"Papa, what should I write?"

My father turned around for a split second so he could watch to ensure Rye didn't burn himself and at the same time address me.

"What are you writing, little guy?" he asked. Rye's arm got a little too close to the side of the oven and Dad pulled him slightly toward him.

"A letter to Katniss," I said. So far, the inside of my card was blank aside from _Dear Katniss_.

Rye stopped moving and looked up at my dad while he ran a hand through his hair. He motioned for Rye to help Leaven and then sat down next to me.

"What kind of letter are you writing?"

"A get better card!" I exclaimed. "She's very sick and our teacher told us a card might make her happy. I hope my card will make her feel better."

My dad nodded. "Why don't you just tell her that?"

"That I hope my card makes her better?" My father nodded and I wrote that down. Then I glanced up at him. "It's been a long time. Why isn't she better already?"

My father sighed and ruffled my hair. "The doctors are doing everything they can," he said. "Sometimes it takes a long time and sometimes there's nothing they can do."

"Is she ever going to get better?"

There was a silence that spread over the bakery. Even Rye and Leaven stopped pounding the dough to hear. My father sighed again. "Nobody knows yet, buddy," he said, almost too quiet for me to hear. "But I'm sure a nice card will do a world of good."

In that moment, I decided I would write to Katniss every day. If she was that sick it was going to take a lot of letters to make her better.

* * *

My first shift is in the rec room. Portia tells me to take my pick of any activity and the kids will flock. Especially the younger ones. New volunteers are always an interesting dynamic. I take a seat next to the tiny volunteer I saw on my tour the previous week and now that I'm up close I know she isn't sixteen. She looks more like she's twelve.

"Hey, I'm Peeta," I say.

"Rue," she says, laying out a few sheets of paper as a couple of kids come sit down.

It doesn't take long for me to decide that Rue will be my new confidante. Although she's young, Rue knows the inner workings of the place like the back of her hand. Her uncle is one of the surgeons and she's spent plenty of time here with volunteers being babysat like siblings of sick kids do and her uncle swung it so she could finally volunteer herself. So she sits here and colors everyday except Friday and watches the older volunteers from afar.

"Are all the volunteers nice?" I ask.

She shrugs and then looks around. She points to a blond boy and a dark-haired girl standing up against a wall, just watching a few kids playing but not engaging with them. "Those are the people you don't want to hang around with," she says. "Cato and Clove, and a few others too. We call them Careers."

The name almost makes me laugh. It's like we've got cliques here. "Careers?"

Rue nods her head. "They volunteer just for the application boost when they apply to college. You can tell because they don't really care."

I take note of that. Stay away from Careers.

"Since you volunteer on Tuesdays, you won't really see Thresh, but if you do, he's cool. He's from my town," she continues.

Thresh equals cool. Got it.

She goes on and on, saying name after name and before long I've lost track of everything. She tells me what to expect from each room I'm sent to volunteer in – little kids in the reading room, healthiest in the rec room, and once I've been here long enough they might have me passing out juice and buckets in the medication room. Of course, Rue will always be in the rec room at the coloring table – it's the only place she can be since she's twelve, unless she wants to go to the reading room and she'd rather draw.

By the end of my shift, I am no longer being glanced warily at by the kids. I am surrounded. One of them, a tiny girl with pale red hair who is being watched for asthma complications, has even decided to sit on my lap, her nurse chuckling and rolling her eyes.

"Posy is such a flirt," the nurse says, winking at Rue while Posy continues to color in the mockingbird she asked me to outline for her.

Rue grins and tells Posy she likes her drawing. The five-year-old smiles brightly and waves it in my face, asking me if I like it. I'm about to open my mouth without even looking but then my eyes land on her coloring job. I have to fight to keep the color from draining out of my face. The mockingbird I drew is colored in with blue crayon – dark blue feathers for the body and light blue feathers on the belly area. It has two beady black eyes with yellow surrounding them. I swallow the lump in my throat.

Posy has drawn a mockingjay.

* * *

Right before Christmas break, I got my first reply from Katniss. I had already written her multiple times, drawing different things on the cover of every card but making sure it never had hair. I would draw birds, mittens, balloons, fish, but I stayed away from things that might remind her that she was losing her hair. If I remembered her correctly, I knew she had pretty hair and was probably devastated to lose it.

My teacher handed me the letter with a smile. Every card I made went to her in the morning so she could mail them to where Katniss's family was staying. The reply came through her as well. I just about ran home, Rye having to yell at me four times to make me slow down and Leaven telling me that if I ran out in the street and got run over by a car our mother was going to kill me. I sat down at the kitchen table and waited patiently for our father to come home from the bakery. Our mother held the shop down during the afternoon and a few employees did the bread orders so my father could come home to watch us in the afternoons.

When he came through the door, I shoved the letter in his hands and insisted he read it to me.

"Alright, alright," he said, sitting down in his chair and pulling me in his lap.

He ruffled my hair and took out the letter. I was so eager to hear from Katniss. I wanted to know what it was like where she was. I told her all about what she was missing at home and school – like how we had a spelling test every Friday and how there was a cat hiding under the bakery porch that hissed at my brothers but not me. I asked her what I should name it and warned her that it was really ugly. I also told her that when she got better and came home, I would show it to her and that I bet it wouldn't hiss.

My father cleared his throat and unfolded the paper. I noticed it wasn't in a card like mine had been, but there was something colorful on the second piece of paper because I could see through the back of the sheet. Then my father read it.

_Dear Peeta, _

_Katniss is too weak to write you back herself, but she wanted me to tell you that she was very excited to receive your letters. She is very fortunate to have someone back home who is praying so hard for her recovery. If you have not named the cat under your porch yet, she said that Buttercup would be a lovely name. She has also given you one of the pages in her coloring book as a thank you for your letters. She waits on them and gets excited when one arrives. She truly enjoys having a pen pal._

_Thank you so much for writing to our daughter. You have brightened her spirits and given her hope._

_Sincerely,_

_Mr. and Mrs. Everdeen_

My dad set the letter portion down on the side table and held out the drawing so we could both look at it. It was a mockingbird but it was colored in with blue crayon. It had dark blue feathers and a light blue belly, yellow surrounding the black eyes. _It looked more like a blue jay than a mockingbird_, my father said. But, I liked it just the same. I asked him if he would hang it up in my room and I looked at it every day before leaving for school. After a while, I decided to call it a mockingjay.

I told Katniss about what I named it in my next letter.

* * *

I tell myself it is a big fat coincidence but it doesn't stop me from tearing my room apart in attempts of finding the picture of the mockingjay Katniss had sent me eleven years ago. I finally find it hidden in a box under my bed filled with old clothes I'll never fit in again. Katniss's coloring was sloppier than Posy's, but the basic concept was the same. Dark and light blue feathers. Yellow eyes.

My mind goes into overdrive, attempting to figure out what all this means, if it means anything at all. Knowing me, I am dramatizing it. Posy had merely used the same grouping of colors that Katniss had used more than a decade ago. There was no indication that Posy knew anything about what this bird was or who it had come from. Maybe, since Katniss's illness, the bird had gone around the hospital. Maybe every patient drew pictures of mockingjays.

Maybe I was going insane and Posy had just chosen the three crayons closest to her.

Besides, Katniss was long since healed or dead by this point. Eleven years? Surely she wasn't still there. No, I knew better. Katniss had died years ago or at least that's the rumor that went around town. The Everdeens had never come back. But I had scoured the obituaries in the newspaper like my father had when my grandmother died, waiting for the write up on the little girl in my class. It never came.

Suddenly, I feel my stomach sink. Had I stopped writing to a little girl who was still alive? Had she waited patiently for my next letter only to never receive one again? But, more importantly, was she still alive? I had just assumed for so long that she was dead but now –

My cell phone vibrates on the desk and I see it's Hersh, telling me soccer practice is canceled tomorrow. I type back a quick one-word response and then lay down in my bed, closing my eyes, and replaying that day in my head.

I had been writing my latest letter to Katniss, telling her about how the mayor's daughter was sick and for her to keep an eye out for her because she had to go to the hospital, when Mr. Cartwright came into the bakery. I liked Mr. Cartwright. He was good friends with my dad and he was a funny guy, still is, and Delly's father always had a good joke. That day, however, he looked soberly at my father as they chatted. I leaned my chair a bit closer to hear.

"Yeah, I heard that she's not doing well at all. Someone's watching the little one for now because they can't take the baby into ICU."

My father let out a breath. "That bad?"

"It's touch and go. Her fever was up to a hundred and four last night and she's having seizures. Meningitis, apparently. As if the kid doesn't have enough problems to deal with." Mr. Cartwright shook his head. "I don't know what I'm going to tell Delly when she dies. She's been talking all the time about her."

"Yeah, Peeta's been writing her letters. Maybe she'll pull through."

"Yeah, well, they're looking for a miracle right now."

I had torn up my letter after that. My letters hadn't worked. Katniss wasn't getting better. She was dying. I left the mockingjay hanging up in my room so I could look at it and hope Katniss's picture wouldn't be in the paper. However, after a while, I figured her parents just hadn't put it in. Then other kids started getting sick too and the whole atmosphere of the town changed.

I was in the second grade when statisticians, epidemiologists, and public health workers from the CDC and NIH declared that our town had a cancer cluster and evacuated eight hundred people who lived closest to the old mine. People remembered Katniss because she was the first one – the warning that a storm was rolling in. Now at school we get a day off once a year just to get blood drawn by state department workers. We call it the reaping because every year there's always one or two kids that show wacky results and get sent to Panem Children's to get the final word that they too have been diagnosed with the same cancer as Katniss and countless others. It's almost stopped now. Last year no one got _reaped_ and I've been lucky to not have any friends or family immediately affected.

With a sigh, I lift the mockingjay picture back in my hands. It's going to nag me until I find out. I need to know if Katniss Everdeen is still alive and I know just who to ask. The girl who's been there the longest. The girl who knows everything. My confidante.

Rue.

* * *

Wednesdays are not my day to volunteer. I volunteer on Tuesdays but that's because it's the only day my schedule allows. My mother is a psycho and insists that I'm busy from sun up to sun down. In fact, the only reason I was volunteering at Panem Children's was because she came up with a whacked out idea that it would look good on my college applications. So, I guess I technically started out as a Career. I don't really need anything else to boost them as I'm already so spread thin. I'm president of the junior senate, a varsity athlete, a member of the art club, the math team, and the key club, as well as being in the top of my class. When I'm not at school, I help my dad out at our family's bakery and, somehow, I manage to find time to read to kids at the library. Now I can add hospital volunteer to the ever-growing list.

And, apparently, I'm a super human that doesn't need sleep.

It doesn't matter to my mother, though, she's planning on me and my brothers making millions so we can pay for her to retire and move to some tropical island. She goes back and forth between hating our living situation and bragging to all her friends about how wonderful it is that I can't keep track. I'll be honest, our town's an old mining town. We're not wealthy, none of us are, but we're not poor either. Talking to my mother, you'd think we were the destitute of the destitute.

But the people that used to live near the old mine – _oh, they're beneath us, Peeta._

I can't wait to go to college if it only means getting away from her even if I have to pay back loans until I'm forty.

"Hey, what are you doing after school?" Hersh asks, sliding into the chair beside me. We have history together and today we have a sub. I was planning on devising a plan that wouldn't make it look creepy to ask Rue if she knew a girl that got treated there when she was a toddler and not a volunteer yet. The more I think about it, the more the idea sounds terrible in my mind and I've convinced myself not to go twice already.

But I got to know if she's alive or not. If she's alive and I stopped writing to her I'm going to feel terrible. What I'm going to do with this information – besides feel guilty about not helping her more if she is alive – I don't really know.

"I'm going to Children's," I say.

Hersh raises an eyebrow. "You really like volunteering there, eh?" he asks. "Your mother will be really happy if you've decided to become Dr. Peeta."

I send him a look and he recoils. "Okay, leaving her out this. Got it. Why are you going? I thought we could have fun since practice got canceled."

Of course he did. That's what we usually do.

"Sorry," I tell him. "But I have to get some test done. It's standard procedure. You have to be healthy to volunteer with sick kids."

I perfected lying years ago by telling my mother I was joining the science club while I was really going to play with my friends. She's not a big fan of some of their families, says they're trash for having so many kids and then complaining about feeding them all. Most of these families live closer to the old mine than us and that's why she doesn't like them, not because they have a lot of kids because some of them don't. One of my brother's friends, Thom, is an only child and she makes the same comments about him.

"Makes sense," Hersh mutters. "But that shouldn't take too long. Text me when you're out and we'll hang."

I agree, but I don't plan on texting him.

The ride down the highway is excruciatingly long and Effie decides today is a wonderful day to tell me her life story while printing my nametag which will clear me to go upstairs. It takes her twenty minutes to tell me about how she was looking through her school yearbook last night and was still trying to block out the memory of dyeing her hair pink. I don't have the heart to stop her, mainly because I think Effie gets bored at her desk and partially because my excuse for leaving is pretty weak. Finally she lets me go when her phone starts ringing and I bolt to the elevators, greeting Darius the guard as I go.

"You volunteering more, Peeta?" he asks as he checks my tag and presses a button on the elevator.

"Nah, just visiting."

Darius shrugs. "Kids really like you, I hear. Portia was talking about it the other day."

Why am I not surprised Portia is on speaking terms with everyone in this hospital?

Rue is sitting right where I expect her to be. More than it has during any other time since its inception last night, my idea seems ludicrous. Rue would have been, what, not even two when Katniss was diagnosed. How would she know? Posy picked the colors randomly, Rue doesn't know Katniss, and I'm overreacting. I just have a feeling in my gut that tells me to go for it anyway. I'm here now. Might as well.

"Peeta!" Rue says when she sees me. She hands a crayon to the little boy beside her and smiles. "What are you doing here?"

Here goes nothing.

"Do you by any chance know any former patients here?" I ask. It seems okay until everything comes tumbling out. "It's just that I knew a girl that got treated here a long time ago and I want to know if she's still alive."

Rue shrugs. "You can try but it depends on how long ago it was."

_Don't be disappointed when she has nothing for you._

"Her name was Katniss Everdeen."

Rue's eyes widen for a moment and then she smirks. "Katniss Everdeen?" she asks. Then she looks me up and down. "Did you know her well?"

_I wrote her letters and then stopped because I thought she was dead._

"Not really," I admit. "She was in my kindergarten class."

Rue nods but the smile hasn't left her face. "Can you take my spot for a minute?" she asks, standing up and motioning for me to take her seat and help the kids coloring. "I'll be right back."

She doesn't take long but when she comes I notice she's brought the blond girl with the braids from the reading room. She looks just as young as Rue and both of them are eyeing me with eager interest.

"Hi," the blond says. "My name's Prim."

"Peeta," I tell her.

I want to turn to Rue, glare at her a little, and tell her I don't have time for games, but Prim crosses her arms over her chest in a protective manner and I immediately feel as if she's trying to threaten or scare me.

"So, Peeta," she says. "My sister never mentioned having any friends back home."

I raise an eyebrow. _What?_

"Let me explain," she continues. "I'm Primrose Everdeen and if you want to see my sister, you have to tell me just how you know her and why you're thinking about her now. I'm not letting you in until I know."

Oh my God. She's still alive.

* * *

Two weeks ago, if someone had asked me about Katniss Everdeen I would have said she was a little girl who died when I was in elementary school. There really wouldn't have been much else I could tell you about her. Maybe I could tell you that she named the cat that spent three months under our porch recuperating from a fight Buttercup, or that she had pretty dark hair. I couldn't tell you the color of her eyes or even point her out in a crowd.

However, after Prim drags me halfway across the city, I know instantly the girl sitting on the steps of the porch is Katniss Everdeen. Dark hair tied in a braid over her shoulder. Her nose pressed in a book that she doesn't seem to be enjoying all too much. Her feet barefoot next to a backpack. A soft hum echoing out of her lips that sounds just as beautiful as the birds chirping along in a nearby bush.

And, I can tell you, in this moment, that I wholeheartedly believe in love at first sight.

"Katniss!" Prim says to get her attention.

I never really anticipated what might happen if I actually met Katniss. When I was five I thought I would meet her, show her Buttercup, and then we'd be friends. I thought having another girl in our group might be good for Delly. However, Buttercup left and Katniss never came back so I kind of forgot, but not really I guess because here I am hoping Katniss will look up, recognize me, and – as much as I don't want to admit it – say she's been in love with me for years.

Oh, man, this is not good.

Katniss looks up from her book and Prim nudges my arm as her sister eyes me with curiosity. "This is Peeta Mellark!" Prim states.

Katniss's eyes widen with recognition and I know instantly that she remembers me. That's a good sign, right? A laundry list of reactions runs through my head as my stomach flops and we make eye contact. I try to remember movies that Delly's made me watch over the years where one of the characters has almost died. Katniss is a survivor. I don't have any idea what that entails for her personality. I'm kind of assuming she's nice and appreciates the world around her now that she knows how easy it is to be taken away.

I am not prepared for her to slam her book shut, grab her backpack, and storm into the house without saying a word.

Prim sighs beside me. "Sorry," she mumbles. "Katniss isn't a people person."

_Yeah, you can say that again_. But, I suppose it makes sense that she might be guarded. She's probably seen a lot of death and that hardens a person. Look at my mother – any ounce of compassion left her body when my grandparents died.

"That's okay," I tell her. "This is more than I expected anyway. I just wanted to know that she was alright."

Prim smiles. "She's fine. She's been in remission for four years now. That's the longest she's ever gone!"

That information makes my heart soar and tumble at the same time. I'm glad she's healthy but at the same time I wish I had done more. My letters might have helped her once, but her life was never easy. Prim's statement leads me to believe that Katniss has seen her fair share of days on the inside of a hospital room. She could've used her pen pal.

"It's going to take some work," Prim continues. "But, if you want to be her friend, it will be worth it, I swear!"

One look at Prim and I know the request isn't because she thinks_ I_ want to be friends with her sister. _She_ wants me to be friends with her sister. It makes me wonder how many friends Katniss Everdeen really has if her twelve-year-old sister is begging a stranger to take her under his wing.

"Well, it's your lucky day, Prim," I tell her. "I'm a hard worker."

I never knew a little girl could smile so widely.

* * *

Homecoming is fast upon us and Delly decides to campaign for a circus theme.

"Are you kidding?" Hersh complains, tearing apart a cinnamon roll while the two sit at the counter, entertaining me while I work my Saturday shift. "Circus? What, do we all show up in fancy costumes and parade around like wild animals?"

Delly glares. "I thought it was original."

"Well, it's stupid."

I can feel their eyes on me before I even look up from doodling on a cake order slip. Delly looks at me with wide eyes, wanting me to agree with her, while Hersh's eyes clearly state that the opinion is trash and if I agree with Delly he's going to tell the soccer team about how big a wimp I am.

I decide to segue into a different conversation – because a circus theme is stupid and I don't feel like picking sides right now.

"Are we allowed to bring dates from other schools?"

Not like I'm going to get Katniss to trust me or even particularly like me – romantically or platonically – in the next few weeks. The only contact we've had with each other is a slammed door. It's just a question to fuel my one-sided love affair. It unnerves me to no end that I haven't been able to stop thinking about her in the three days it's been since Prim took me to their house. I have dreams about running my fingers through her braid, untangling the dark tresses and feeling the softness with my scarred baker's skin. One too many times I've woken up in a cold sweat thinking about the color of her skin, which is so much darker than mine, and how soft I imagine it to be. My fingers begin to tingle in excitement just thinking about –

"Hello? Earth to Peeta?" Hersh says, waving a hand in my face. "Geez, this volunteer must be gorgeous."

"Peeta?" Delly asks, her eyes wide. Hersh may be oblivious, but Delly can read me like a book – scouring the pages to find all the hidden meanings between every line, every deliberate metaphor that I haven't laid out yet and probably don't need to. She doesn't know I've met Katniss or even that I still remember her, but she can see through me the minute my face drops at Hersh's mention of _volunteer_.

She knows my love interest isn't a volunteer. She just doesn't know the patient isn't sick anymore.

"Sorry."

Hersh laughs and pats my shoulder before going back to his cinnamon bun. "Dude, it's fine. After that gnarly break up with Bristel last year, you need to get yourself back out there."

Gnarly isn't a strong enough word for what happened between me and Bristel. It had been a week of me, a lowly sophomore, being noticed by a beautiful senior when my mother found out from Leaven, who had been Bristel's classmate, when he accidently made a reference to where she lived in a jab at me during dinner. It was made clear that night that under no circumstance were any of the Mellark brothers to engage in _any _activity with anyone that lived even a fraction of a hair closer to the old mine than we did – this included Leaven's long time girlfriend, the florist's daughter, that lived next door to us but on the wrong side until my father set her straight. Bristel and me, however, were a no go and apparently beautiful senior girls do not take well to sophomore boys trying to tell them _sorry, my mother says you're not good enough_. Of course, I didn't say it in so many words, but everyone in town knows my mother's opinions.

"Peeta, are you sure this is a good idea?" Delly asks.

Hersh rolls his eyes. "Delly, it's not like they have to get married," he hisses. "Besides, if you get your way, it won't even be a dance. It'll be a bunch of kids pretending to be lions jumping through rings of fire."

"Sorry if not wanting another stupid red carpet theme is ruining your life," Delly retorts before turning back to me. "But she's okay, right?"

It's not a question. It's a demand. She doesn't want to see me get hurt and is probably thinking the worst – gullible Peeta has unknowingly fallen under the spell of a girl marked for death. She's already imagining Romeo and Juliet, Daisy and Gatsby, and every other pair of star-crossed lovers we've covered in our English class. Delly is all too willing to parallel me and my unknown (and unrequited) love to each and every one of these literary tragedies.

"She's fine," I say.

Delly drops it for now. I will be getting an earful at some point. Today is not the day though, not with Hersh sitting next to us wondering how he can manage to volunteer with me to meet some beautiful girl like I have. Delly smacks the back of his head and I can't help but grin.

* * *

Prim and Rue are friends. It does not surprise me in the slightest. Not only are they the same age, but they are very similar in many ways. Both are caring individuals who feel a need to reach out and lend a helping hand. Apparently, they've known each other for a while. Rue had told me that she used to go to the reading room when she was younger and it was the reason she started to volunteer. It never clicked in my head, until Prim mentioned it when she took me to her house, that they would meet there – Rue, the doctor's niece, and Prim, the sister of the patient.

On Tuesday, Rue has a huge grin on her face when I arrive. Prim conned one of the volunteers in the rec room to take her spot in the reading room so she could sit with me and Rue at the coloring table.

"So, we've decided how you're going to start your mission," Prim announces when she sits down in front of us. She smiles at a little boy and hands him a crayon.

"Mission?" I ask.

Rue giggles. "Mission Befriend Katniss, of course."

I feel like she wants to add in a long _duh_ but refrains.

"You just need to talk to her," Prim states. The way she says it is almost like she's asking me to drink a glass of water. How do I _just talk_ to a girl I never see? We don't live in the same area. We never see each other. The only time I could ever possibly meet up with her is if I went to her house.

Which, as it turns out, is exactly our mission.

"You're going to drive Prim home," Rue instructs. "She'll invite you in for a drink and snack as a gracious host. Katniss will be there, you strike up conversation, and there we go."

"I have to warn you," Prim interjects. "Talking to Katniss is like pulling teeth sometimes."

Why does this not surprise me? Call me the Great Masochist. I fell for a functional mute and my personality thrives on conversation. I suppose it fits the model of opposites attract. Oh, if only Hersh could see my situation now, he'd never beg me for an application form again. Two twelve-year-olds are setting me up. The situation is so pathetic I kind of want to laugh.

As the plan goes, I drive Prim home. She's so into it that she asks me to come in for apple cider and cookies while we're still in the truck and not within hearing range of any other human. I humor her and she leads me up the steps. To be honest, the last time I was so focused on Katniss I didn't notice their house. It's a beautiful Victorian with a large front porch and stately entrance. There is nothing about this house that I will find when I drive home to an old mining town with houses bursting at the seams with people. I secretly wonder how Katniss's parents can afford a place like this after all the medical bills that I can imagine piled up with a daughter as sick as she was. Prim, however, bounces up the steps with a spring in her gait so I don't bring her down from her high by prying into business that isn't mine.

As soon as the front door opens, Katniss comes into view.

"Prim, you're home early!" she exclaims, standing up from her spot at the bottom of the steps. She notices me and frowns, her eyes going to Prim. The little blond smiles but turns away. The plan suddenly seems like a sinking ship.

"Kat, you remember Peeta, right?" she asks, too slow for someone as confident as Prim had been just moments ago in the truck. "I invited him for cider and cookies."

Prim grabs Katniss's hand and leads her into the kitchen, beginning her talk of her day that seems like a routine for them – telling Katniss something about a teacher, a boy named Rory, and finally how she volunteered at the coloring table and _how nice_ it was that I offered to give her a ride home so she didn't have to walk.

Katniss eyes me curiously, but doesn't say a word.

I watch as Prim opens the fridge, pulling out the apple cider she's been talking about and three glasses. She then takes out two plates, takes two cookies out of a glass display, and puts them in front of me and Katniss, taking her own drink in her hand and smirking.

"I'm going to go say hi to Haymitch," she sings as she bounces off out of the room.

Suddenly I am completely alone with the girl I've been thinking about nonstop for almost a week and I have nothing to say. So, I draw on what Prim said. "Who's Haymitch?"

Katniss eyes me again. I've never really had anyone look at me warily before but that's the overwhelming emotion I'm getting from her. She shrugs. "My lifeline," she answers. Vague and completely mysterious. I'm no closer to knowing who Haymitch is than I am meeting the president.

Again, we fall into an awkward silence I don't know how to break. As I try to think of anything and everything to say, Katniss opens her mouth. But before she can speak, a loud set of footsteps, followed by another pair of smaller ones, echo through the home.

I am suddenly met with the face of Haymitch Abernathy.

He's a pretty big legend back home so I'm surprised the name didn't click in my head when I heard it. He made millions shooting archery at the Olympic level, winning sponsorships like no tomorrow. He's the only person who really did anything from our town worth mentioning. However, he fell in a bottle when his wife died in some freak accident, and everyone in town spread rumors about how he was just some washed up deadbeat. He looks exactly the same as he does in the picture hanging up in the front lobby of the high school, only older. He's got dark hair, gray eyes, and a tall lumbering build that could intimidate anyone. He's got the same features as Katniss in a way.

"Well, well, well," he chortles, his hand clasping a glass that reeks of alcohol. He doesn't seem drunk, though, so I suppose that's a good thing. "Sweetheart, you made a friend! I'm so proud of you."

Prim elbows him and he spills his drink – rum and coke, it looks like – on the tile floor.

"Uncle Haymitch," she says. "Don't make fun of her!"

_Uncle Haymitch._ Explains the house, I guess.

Prim's obviously not too offended by Haymitch's jeers at her sister because she's fighting back giggles. Katniss, on the other hand, glares at him. They stare at each other, communicating silently, before Haymitch laughs and pulls a bottle of scotch out of the cooler in the island Katniss and I are sitting at. He pours it into his glass and slams the bottle on the table.

"Now, where'd you come from, kid?"

It's takes me a second too long to realize the question is directed at me. Prim answers instead.

"Peeta volunteers with me," she says. "And he knew Katniss from back home."

Haymitch nearly spits his drink out and looks at Katniss with newfound knowledge. He looks back and forth between us, trying to figure out the connection. "Must be intense," he says slowly, testing the waters. "If you, uh, last saw each other when you _five_."

I don't know their relationship, but I know just from the look he's giving her that he thinks Katniss is pulling a fast one on him. At least, that's what it looks like. I can't really read the guy, just like I can't read Katniss. Speaking of the dark-haired beauty, she stands up and storms out of the room and out the door. I look to Prim, asking her what to do with the expression on my face, but it's Haymitch who mentors me on how to handle it.

"Go," he says, taking another sip of his scotch. "But, be warned, there's nothing worse than a pissed off Katniss."

He turns and pats Prim's head. "Let's go, blondie. I think one of the geese is pregnant."

I'm beginning to wonder just exactly what I'm getting myself into.

Katniss is sitting on the porch swing when I step outside. I stand a good distance away, not sure what wrath to expect or what exactly happened to get her so upset. I decide it's up to her to take the lead with this. It doesn't take long for her fists to clench and for her to stand, walking right up to get in my face. I'm not exceptionally tall, but I've got a good head on her in height and it still doesn't make her any less intimidating.

"Fire away," I tell her, hoping to ignite the flame I can nearly see growing inside the little spitfire.

And she does.

"You have no right!" she screams. "No right coming here after all these years. You don't even talk to me for a decade and suddenly, what, you're here? Making friends with Prim? What is this?" Her face contorts into a knowing glare. "It's a dare. Go find the sick girl from kindergarten and bring her back as some prize. What do you want from me?"

At some point between me having no right and making friends with Prim, she started beating my chest with her fists.

"I want to be your friend," I say.

This is the wrong thing to say because I am shoved backwards and land in a potted plant. My hand is slashed by a shard of broken pottery and starts bleeding down my arm. Katniss looks green for a minute, as if she's sorry, and then shakes her head.

"I have no friends," she says. "So just leave me alone."

One of the perks of getting to know Effie is that when I walk into Children's to see if I could get help there, she calls down to one of her friends at the triage desk in the ER. I am shuffled down to one of the medical students, who are on break in the lounge, and she looks at me without even asking for my information, so I'm not charged with an ER visit. I just have to come down and get the stitches out next Tuesday.

* * *

Delly's circus theme loses miserably and, for the third year in a row, the chosen theme is red carpet. I think people just enjoy pretending their famous Hollywood actors. The red carpet theme is about as close as any of us will ever get to Los Angeles, let alone staring in a feature film.

And, since Mission Befriend Katniss failed epically and I haven't seen her in weeks, I'm going stag. Hersh doesn't understand what happened to my gorgeous co-volunteer and Delly's convinced my date died. I don't have the ego to tell them I never had a date in the first place, nor how I ended up with stitches in my hand.

However, before the dance, we have the big soccer game to win.

Since our school has no football team – which, by the way, is unheard of in our football fanatic section of the country – our homecoming surrounds a big soccer match up. When our team advanced in the district play to send us to the state championships, the school voted to move homecoming to after that. No pressure, but no one really wanted to go to homecoming if we lost, so it was basically incentive from the student body to win.

I told Prim and Rue they were invited to come, since it was in the state capitol where Prim lives and I figured she'd want someone to come with her – and there was no way in my mind that Katniss would show even if Prim begged for a companion.

Our team, the Rebels, is slated to play the Mutts, a team I know nothing about. So, it surprises me when I see that Cato and Marvel, two of my fellow volunteers – Careers, as Rue would call them – play for the Mutts. We even talk formalities during warm up. Rue waves to me from the stands. It's like a regular reunion. I do notice Prim isn't there and she hasn't brought Katniss, but I don't let it bother me. I have a game to play.

Halfway through the first half, I'm doing fairly well. I play defense and have been tackling Cato all night. He's getting pretty perturbed actually that he can't get by me to shoot on our goalie. The score is stalemated at zero-zero when I see two sisters that look nothing alike walk into the stadium. The blond skips ahead while the dark-haired one walks slower with her arms over her chest. She clearly doesn't want to be here.

But she is here and I get so distracted Marvel pushes by me and I'm knocked to the ground, having to lift myself up to backtrack and make up lost ground. Suddenly, now that I know she's here and can see me, I feel like I have something to prove.

During halftime, I try to catch her eye but she deliberately looks anywhere but me. Prim and Rue, on the other hand, wave wholeheartedly and my team wolf-whistles and laughs about how I've got babies crushing on me. I decide, as I take my spot back out on the field, that this game is for Katniss. I'm playing to show her I'm dedicated to the sport, showing some character I think she'd appreciate. After the game I can talk to her, show her that I'm not such a terrible person after all.

It's around the time that I'm getting excited – because if she came it must mean _something_ – that I slide tackle Cato and the two of us end up a mess of sprawling limbs, the source of a pig pile of Mutt offense and Rebel defense.

Around the time my eyes are covered by a body, a pop explodes in my knee and I begin to see stars. Then, my head hits a cleat, the stars disappear, and my world fades into blackness.

* * *

When I wake up, the first thing I see is a Newfoundland-sized elephant on the wall and I think I've lost my mind. Then I feel the prick in my arm and let my eyes travel up the tube to the IV pole and see I'm attached to a bag of morphine. My mouth emits a low groan without my instructions and I hear a sigh of relief. When I turn, I'm greeted with the sight of my parents.

My father looks thrilled but my mother just looks conflicted.

"Welcome back, kiddo," Dad says.

The rest of the day goes by in a blur of white coats and long phrases. I meet with a surgeon. I meet with the neurologist. Nothing of what either of them says goes through my head. Then, they let me go home with the instructions to stay off my feet for a few weeks and, once the swelling in my knee goes down, I can have surgery to reconstruct my ACL. My parents have to wake me up every few hours through the night for my concussion. But, otherwise, I'm totally fine.

It's three days later, when Hersh and Delly stop by with some homework, that I realize I missed homecoming. Hersh says it was lame anyway.

It takes two weeks for the swelling to go down enough for the doctors to operate. To be honest, by the time the doctors deem me ready, I don't even want it anymore. It's expensive and my parents have been arguing since we got home about it. My mother thinks it's unnecessary – she saw a show on television once where the patient just had rehab and didn't need surgery. My father is siding with the surgeon – I've busted it enough that, without surgery, I may not be able to walk on it. Ultimately, my father wins but my mother doesn't come to see me into surgery claiming someone has to watch the bakery while my father plays nurse.

Dr. Chaff introduces me to his team that will be with me during the surgery but the only one I really remember is the anesthesiologist, a woman who insists I don't call her doctor, but by her first name, Cecelia. As they wheel me in, she tells me stories of her three kids and tells me I remind her of them. She fixes a mask over my face and tells me to count down from sixty. _A minute_, she says, _and the entire surgery will be over._

I make it down to fifty before I'm surrounded by wilderness, similar to the woods near my home.

The next time I wake up is in post-op. Unlike every other part of Panem Children's, the room is stark white with nothing on the walls but a thick layer of boring paint. It doesn't take me long to close my eyes and fall back under.

* * *

Finnick Odair is a young guy unlike Dr. Chaff, Cecelia, and my day nurse Seeder. He doesn't look much older than Rye and he acts younger than Leaven. I think that may be why I like him so much. He's a jokester, likes to flirt with Seeder when she wheels me down from my room to the rehabilitation floor, and tells me that he doesn't take cash for his services, but secrets. I told him he was going to end up being a very poor physical therapist. He told me I wasn't looking at things the right way.

The first week and a half after my surgery is torture.

"Come on, Peeta," Finnick says. I'm doing supported bilateral calf-raises. If anyone saw me nearly crying while trying to stand on my toes for more than five seconds, I'd be the laughing stock of the whole school. I feel absolutely pathetic. Finnick has to basically hold me up.

Then, when I see someone walk in I never thought I'd ever see again, Finnick takes all my weight. Luckily, he's strong and already worried about me giving out on him because he probably wasn't expecting me to go 'dead weight' on him so quickly.

"You're lucky you have me and not Johanna," Finnick says. It's a joke, but not really. "She'd have already taken away your crutches."

I don't respond and Finnick eyes me for a moment before turning around to follow my line of vision.

"Katniss!" he exclaims. "I thought I told you to never show your face around here again!"

The more I think about it, the more I realize Katniss probably isn't here to see me. I'm not exactly sure why she would be here though so my brain is going through hyper drive trying to figure out what she could possibly be doing. It's not like she had some sort of tumor that had to be removed and would require her to do PT. She had leukemia, just like everyone else in town affected by the cluster, and I'm not sure why she would need PT for that – of course, I'm not an expert by any means.

"Hello, Finnick," Katniss says. She's still scowling like every time I've seen her, but her lips upturn in a tiny smile when Finnick sets me down in my wheelchair to go over to her. My crutches lay forgotten on the floor and I wish more than anything my arms weren't sore and chafed from using them. Being seen in a wheelchair by Katniss is not at the top of my most wanted list.

"Do you have any secrets for me, sugar?" he asks, batting his eyes like a toddler trying to get out of trouble.

"Sorry, you already know I'm an open book."

Well, that's news to me. I can't read Katniss at all. However, Finnick agrees, throwing an arm over her shoulder and laughing about how all her secrets show on her face. Katniss ducks out of his arm, pushing him away like she did to me the last time we talked, only she's not trying to push him into some potted plant and Finnick barely moves.

Then, she looks at me and I swear in that moment I could do the calf-raises all by myself.

"What are you doing here?" I ask.

She shrugs. "Prim wanted to say hi," she says, her eyes looking down at her feet. She's wearing her winter boots, even though we haven't seen the first snow yet because it's unseasonably warm, and despite being clunky, she's soundless as she walks. "But, she's not allowed down here, so I told her I'd do it."

"You're not allowed down here either, brainless," a voice says behind me. Johanna Mason, one of the other physical therapists, walks by us with her lunch bag over her shoulder. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm glad I got assigned Finnick instead of her. Like Finnick said earlier, I'd probably be walking without my crutches by now, but she's a little rough around the edges.

Finnick chuckles and Johanna sends Katniss a smirk, reaching forward to pinch her cheek. "Just because you have this whole place wired to your every beck and call doesn't mean we all want to see you."

"Aww, leave her alone, Jo," Finnick says in a voice that could get him hired as a toddler's television show host. "I love seeing former patients. Makes me feel all ooey and gooey inside knowing I helped 'em."

Johanna rolls her eyes and walks out of the room toward the lounge.

Finnick smirks and looks between Katniss and me before grabbing his clipboard. "We were almost done, Peeta. I'll let you go early and we'll go long tonight." And, with that, he takes his lunch and just about sprints after Johanna. Not for the first time am I extremely thankful for Finnick's lack of professionalism.

We're silent while we wait for Seeder to come back for me. Katniss bounces on her toes, back and forth, back and forth. It's soothing to watch her move because, even in her frantic motions, she's exceedingly graceful. However, it doesn't take my mind off the fact she gave Prim as an excuse for her visit. Prim's been up to visit me a few times since my surgery, stopping by my room after her volunteering with Rue. She keeps an optimistic face, telling me I'll be good as new in no time and that I'll feel so much better once these first two weeks are over and I can start the outpatient part of the rehabilitation program.

"So, what are you really here for?"

Katniss looks up like a deer caught in headlights. She bites her lip and shrugs. I'm about to change the subject when her voice, quiet and almost unsure, says, "You wrote me letters once."

If this was Delly or Hersh, or anyone else for that matter, I would have come up with some humorous response, but with Katniss I don't know how to respond. This is obviously important to her if she came here. And, the fact that she mentioned the letters I wrote to her years ago makes me wonder what she's thinking.

"Did you write me a letter?" I say with a smile.

She shakes her head. "No," she whispers. "I'm not very good with words."

Again, we stay in silence, me in my chair, Katniss bouncing from the balls of her feet back to her heels. Normally, I'm a chatty mess, but Katniss came here for a reason and something tells me a lot of chatter will scare her away. I feel as if I'm dealing with a wild animal – cautiously watching and waiting for it to either fight or take flight.

"You said you wanted to be my friend," she says. I look up and nod. "Why?"

Well, there are plenty of reasons why, none of which are suitable to tell her. I don't want to say Prim wanted her to have a friend. I definitely don't want to tell her I'm attracted to her – I can just see that ending miserably.

"What made you think of me after all these years?" she presses, a little annoyed that I haven't responded.

Then, my mouth becomes unattached to my brain.

"It's funny really when you think about it," I say. "There was this little girl at the coloring table and she asked me to draw her a mockingbird that she could color in so I outlined one and gave it to her. When she picked out the colors and showed it to me, I was reminded of the picture you sent to me when I first started sending you letters."

Katniss frowns and presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose. "You remember that?" she says, but it's more to herself than to me.

I answer anyway. "Yeah, I found the picture of the mockingjay at home and looked at it for a few minutes and I just had to find out if you…"

And then I die out. How do I finish that sentence? _I had to make sure you weren't dead._ Real charming.

"A mockingjay," Katniss says, opening her eyes and staring at me. They're gray, a stunning gray that is so clear they nearly blend into the white and echo with a million emotions. "I can't believe you remember."

"Of course I remember," I laugh. "I coined the name, after all."

She opens her mouth to say something else when Seeder comes into the room to collect me. I like Seeder and all, she's my favorite nurse, but I want to know what Katniss had to say. She's skittish so she's going to run now. I just know it. However, when Seeder goes to take my chair, Katniss beats her to it.

"I got it," she says.

Seeder eyes me for a minute and I just shrug. She's going to want to hear all about this girlfriend I told her I didn't have when Katniss leaves. I just don't know what I'm going to say. What is Katniss to me? Are we friends now?

We eat lunch in almost complete silence. Well, I eat, Katniss watches. I'm exhausted after from the physical therapy – and probably a little from figuring out Katniss – and fight to keep my eyes open.

When I open my eyes, Katniss is gone, but in her wake is a bouquet of dandelions, the last of the weed before it goes dormant for winter.

* * *

Despite the fact that my room is just as bright and colorful as every other section of the hospital, Katniss calls it the cave. When she arrives the next day at the same time, watching me and Finnick finish the last of my therapy and then following Seeder back up to my room, I'm surprised but I'm not going to say anything to question it. When she comes a third day, walking beside me as I crutch to the elevator, I'm through the moon.

It's that third day, when I'm basically falling asleep on her, as I tend to do after the grueling exercises Finnick helps me with, that she divulges the information.

"After my relapse, Prim and I would shut off all the lights and pull the blinds down. Then we'd climb under the sheets and hide," Katniss says. "We pretended we were in a cave, shutting out the rest of the world and everything bad that was going on around us."

"When was this?"

Katniss smiles. She has a far off look that makes it seem like she's a thousand miles away. "I was eleven. Prim was seven."

I nod and piece together the information. "So, that's why you call it a cave."

"It makes it a little less scary," she admits. "Instead of being in a hospital room with death looming over my head, it was like playing a game. Reality wasn't important. It made it seem like I could do anything…be anything I wanted."

The idea of the cave engulfs me. It did sound like the perfect place to hide from everything. And here I was, doing just that. My parents came every so often, my father nearly every night, my mother not so much with her busy schedule of book clubs and PTA meetings. I had yet to think about the homework piling on one of my chair, Delly had even done some of it for me. All I cared about was getting through Phase 1 of my physical therapy and getting off crutches so I could do the outpatient program.

And the added bonus of getting to know Katniss Everdeen.

"Sounds perfect."

She looks up at me with a jerk of her head, as if she had forgotten I was in the room at all. A somber smile plays on her lips.

"Yeah, well," she says. "Reality always comes back, you know. You can only escape for so long."

I yawn and Katniss starts to get up. She moves to the door but pauses, turning around and staring at me. "How much longer before they discharge you?"

"A few days. Finnick thinks I might be able to go home tomorrow."

She nods and looks almost sad for a minute. Then, she turns her head and walks out the door. I wonder if I'm ever going to see her again or if, like my letters so many years ago, Katniss's aid was only intended to inspire hope and then leave me waiting for more.

* * *

Before I'm allowed to leave, I have to fill out a survey and meet with a hospital board official. Mr. Crane eyes me intently as I answered all his questions. The rehabilitation program I benefited from is only a pilot program for an addition to the hospital. The hospital's president, Mr. Snow, wants to add a pediatric inpatient rehabilitation center to Panem Children's but before he can pass the measure he has to ensure it will work. Now I understand why my parents weren't fretting about a two week hospital stay's costs – in exchange for being part of the pilot (which I probably didn't need to be an inpatient for anyway) Mr. Snow paid the bill right out of his big fat pocket to make sure I made his idea seem legit.

Then, I'm free to leave but they may ask me to give more opinions when the time comes to pass the measure. Suddenly I have become the poster child for Snow's new project and I haven't even met the guy. But, if he's going to foot the bill, I suppose I owe him that much.

On my way out, I stop by to tell Portia I've been discharged and Finnick says I'm cleared to _sit and color with the kiddies_. I don't use Finnick's words, but his voice echoes through my head when I tell her I'll be back on Tuesday.

That's when I slam right into Prim.

"Peeta!" she exclaims, wrapping her little arms around my waist.

"Hey, Prim," I say, patting her head. "What's up?"

Prim smiles and looks up at me. Now I'm thankful for the exercises Finnick had me doing. My leg is shaking with Prim's grasp but not unbearably so and I just can't pull myself away. She looks so happy.

"I wanted to say thank you," she says.

"For what?"

If it's possible, Prim's smile grows even wider. "For Katniss."

My smile falters and I become increasingly confused. For Katniss? What have I done to her now? But, Prim's happy so it couldn't have been anything too terrible. However, when she left my room – the cave – yesterday she looked glum. And, of course, she hadn't come by today.

Prim lets go of me and starts bouncing in excitement. I can't help but think about how much different she is from her sister. Not just in appearance either. Prim is so light while Katniss walks around as if she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. Prim is open, making friends with everyone and anything that moves. Katniss still has me questioning if we're friends or not.

"You really got through to her," Prim continues, as if she hasn't seen my confusion. Or, maybe she says it because she has seen my confusion. "She must care about you. She's smiling and everything. All the time! She hasn't smiled since –"

"Oh, Prim, I don't think that was me."

A tiny smirk spreads on her lips, overtaking the enthusiastic smile. "She's stubborn and she won't say it in so many words," Prim tells me, "but you can't give up on her."

Am I giving up on her? Not really, I don't think. But, then I realize I won't see her anymore. She won't come to my rehab so she can walk with me back up to my room and sit with me until I fall asleep. I won't see her when I volunteer. Now, I can see why Prim might think I'm giving up.

"Don't be a stranger," Prim says, turning to walk away so I can't argue back. She waves over her shoulder, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. "Katniss doesn't go to school. Uncle Haymitch has her homeschooled, so she's always at the house because she doesn't ever go anywhere."

Is this really happening?

"And Uncle Haymitch doesn't care if we have company!" Prim shouts when she gets to the end of the hall.

It is.

* * *

With soccer over, even without my injury, my afternoons free up immensely. I still have meetings before school and during lunch period, but I have bigger chunks of free time that, in the past, I've used to log hours at the bakery. This year, I have to go to see Finnick three times a week, so my work with my dad is sporadic at most. He doesn't mind. The fact that my limp is improving by the first snowfall of December is better than my free labor.

And, when Christmas comes around, I'm not sure if I should get anything for Katniss.

Katniss, of all people, comes to my rehab. She sits in a chair, encouraging me while Finnick aides me in my exercises. She and Finnick just about screamed in celebration when I could finally do a full squat on my own. It's been great encouragement to have her there although, at times, she can get on Finnick's nerves. If she sees I'm hurting too much she insists he stops pushing me to which he'll tell her he's doing his job.

Judging by that, it would seem we've hit it off. Not even close. Aside from the rehab, we don't see each other. She nearly sprints out of the training center while I'm signing out and, when I drop Prim off at their home on Tuesdays, she hides in her room with the door closed. Once I tried knocking at Prim's insistence but she told me she was doing an online test and it was timed so she couldn't talk.

She's living somewhat of a double life with me. Encouraging friend at rehab, chilly foe everywhere else.

There's also the issue that I know nothing about her. I know that when she was sick she and Prim played cave in her hospital bed. I know her life has been nothing but hardship. She lives with her sister and their usually drunk uncle, and I've never been brave enough to ask Prim what happened to their parents so I don't know why. I know that every time I see her, my stomach burns with a hunger I've never felt before, but I don't even know her favorite color.

Prim's invitation for me to get to know Katniss has resulted in Katniss shutting me out completely. The only reason how I know she celebrates Christmas – because we haven't conversed about anything other than my progress at rehab – is because Prim comes into the hospital wearing reindeer ears two Tuesdays before and, when she comes to see me and Rue, tells us about boxes the UPS man delivers to her house that she's sure Haymitch has bought to go under the tree they got the previous weekend.

"Was it fun?" Rue asks. "I've always wanted to chop my own tree."

Prim shakes her head. "No, not really. Katniss got cold and Uncle Haymitch got bored. We picked the first decent tree we came across so we could get Katniss some hot chocolate. They're both pretty impatient. Uncle Haymitch wants to buy a plastic one next year."

The comment makes me laugh. I can definitely picture Katniss and Haymitch, their arms crossed over their chests with scowls on their faces, watching Prim dance through the snow covered field of trees. I try to imagine Haymitch in a woolen hat too but the idea can't even form in my mind.

While Rue and Prim giggle about what they're asking for, I let my mind wander to what gift – if I do decide to get one – Katniss would like. It can't be too expensive, since I don't really have the money for that. Something tells me she's not into that anyway. Something else tells me she's not a jewelry or girly-type of gift-getter. I just don't see her getting excited about a dress like Prim, who's been gushing about one she saw for almost ten minutes now.

That's when it strikes me. Katniss is the type of person that would appreciate something homemade.

I hope.

When I get home that night I pull out my sketchbook and the charcoal I bought with my allowance before it all started going toward Finnick's paycheck. I spend a few hours every day on it until I've deemed it perfect. I just have to decide whether or not to give it to her.

I debate this, back and forth, the entire time I'm volunteering. I debate this as I grab Prim and we drive to her house. I debate it as I park.

"Merry Christmas, Peeta," she says softly, flipping the hood on her coat as she opens the door.

I watch the little blond disappear in the small flurry of snow blowing in the wind as she carefully walks up through the icy walkway. When she gets to the front door, she opens it and turns, waving to me as she has every time I've dropped her off since Katniss wouldn't open the door to her room. I hadn't gone inside since and Prim hadn't bothered me about it, seeming to understand I could only try so hard to get through to her sister if she didn't want me back.

My head turns to the backpack I know holds the folder with the drawing. I look back and forth between the snowy walk and my backpack before putting the truck in drive. The radio screams Christmas carols and tiny children play in the fresh snow, building forts and chucking snowballs, all the things I used to do when I was younger. Hersh and I would be soldiers on the front lines behind our forts, pretending we were in trenches during World War I as our brothers or friends pounded us from another fort. Delly even joined in some of the times, pretending to nurse us back to health when we were mortally wounded in battle.

The more I think about this, the more I think about Katniss. I wonder if she ever got the chance to play in the snow. I'm sure with her immune system weakened with chemo, like the kids that wear masks when they color, her parents never let her outside on cold winter days. My eyes dance back to my backpack and I try to imagine her right now – Prim showing her all the gifts she received at the volunteer holiday party.

I feel a lump in my throat when I realize I'm Katniss's only friend, whether she wants me or not. She's not going to get the gifts that Prim will. My stomach lurches unpleasantly at the thought. Although we never do much, Hersh, Delly and I always get a little something for each other. Sometimes kids pass out homemade fudge at school, my dad usually sends a cookie to every kid in our tiny town despite my mother's protests, and yesterday I was treated to some peppermint bark the mayor sent.

My truck comes to a stop outside the Abernathy-Everdeen abode once more.

I don't take my whole backpack, just the folder, and walk carefully up the walk, trying not to slip and fall. Finnick would have a field day if I told him how I fell and ruined all the progress we'd made. It takes longer than it should, but I eventually get to the door and beat on the old-fashioned knocker.

"Coming!" Prim's voice echoes as the door unlatches and her smiling face replaces it. Her eyes go to the folder in my hand. "Peeta!"

"Hey, I have something for your sister."

Just as I expected, all of Prim's gifts are spread out over the hardwood floor, covering it with hair ribbons and nail polishes. Prim, I'll admit, wasn't hard to shop for. She's gotten Haymitch to tie one of the bows she received in his hair as he sips on a glass of eggnog. Although Prim is always talking about how much he drinks, he seems like a good guardian. A man who doesn't let on that he cares as much as he does. Again, I'm drawn to the similarities between him and Katniss – as I'm sure she cares about Finnick and me as friends but would never admit it.

And, there she is, sitting on the couch with her feet tucked up under her, smirking at Haymitch's dark bowed locks as he glares at her. The look on his face is almost daring her to make a comment. Katniss is enjoying herself. Her eyes are closed as she tries to fight the giggles.

"Katniss, you have a visitor," Prim says.

She spins around in shock and, when she sees me, her face drops any and all excitement it held only moments ago. My mind is telling me to abort the mission. But, then I look back down at all the silly gifts Prim received at the party, my mind going to my backpack full of gifts in the truck, and I pull up every ounce of courage not to run. Katniss, of anyone I've ever met, deserves to have a little something good in her life.

"Hi," I say, tapping the folder in my hand with my fingers.

She nods her head in unspoken greeting and I let out a breath. This isn't our relationship. Our relationship is one of encouragement. I sent her letters when she was sick and she cheers me on when I'm rehabbing my knee. With Katniss, it's all about routine. She comes every day at the same time. She does the same thing. She does what she feels she owes me – encouragement.

Coming to her house with a gift is out of her comfort zone.

I take a deep intake of breath and lift the folder. "I, uh, wanted you to have this," I say, walking the least number of steps as I can to get close enough to hand it to her. She looks at the folder and then back up at me, her eyes wide.

Dealing with Katniss is like dealing with a skittish animal. When she's out of her usual territory, she doesn't know how to react. Small gestures frighten her. It's best to leave before she gets too freaked out.

"Merry Christmas, Katniss."

I go to turn and as I'm walking out, she says, "But I didn't get you anything."

A small chuckle gets caught in my throat. "I know. I wasn't expecting you to," I say. I wave to the two on the couch. "Mr. Abernathy. Katniss. Merry Christmas." Before I leave, I pat Prim's head and then I excuse myself out the door, going to sit in my truck for a few minutes listening to a Christmas tune echo.

…_So this is Christmas_

_And what have you done_

_Another year over_

_And a new one just begun_

_And so this is Christmas_

_I hope you have fun_

_The near and the dear ones_

_The old and the young…_

The engine starts with a jerk as it does when it's cold and I try to get Katniss's face out of my head. What's done is done. I'll find out what she thought of it at my next date with Finnick. If she's there, then I suppose it was a good idea. If she's not, I know I've scared her away. As much as I try not to, I think about her the entire forty-five minutes it takes to get home, hoping, even if she doesn't appreciate my gift, she at least has a decent Christmas.

…_A very merry Christmas_

_And a happy New Year_

_Let's hope it's a good one_

_Without any fear…_

* * *

New Years rings in with an anticlimactic party at the Donners'. Between Hersh and his brothers, the basement is full of people reaping the benefits of Hersh's older brother's recent twenty-first birthday. When it becomes all too suffocating, I step out and sit in the old tire swing hanging off the tree house.

Katniss didn't come to my only rehab session after Christmas before New Years. Finnick took some time off to go visit his wife's family and, instead of leaving me with a grumpy Johanna, he told me as long as I continued my exercises he was giving me a vacation. I had one session and she didn't show.

It shouldn't be affecting me this much. But it is and I just want it to stop.

"You look cold."

I look up to see Delly standing in front of me, dressed to the nines in her winter gear. I'm in my jacket, but the weather hadn't been my main thought.

"How can you see? It's pitch black," I say.

Delly sighs and comes to stand next to the swing, resting her mitten-protected hands on my own. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," I say. Delly sighs again. She's known me forever and she can read me like a book, so I relent. It'll be easier if I don't try to lie to her. "No. I'm not."

She doesn't say anything. Delly and I are both talkers. We hate silence. A silence between us has purpose. The purpose of this silence, as it usually is when one of us is upset, is for Delly to show me that she'll wait for me to tell her what's bothering me.

"I met this…amazing girl."

And then I let it rip. Without even thinking, I tell her everything. The whole story spills right out of my mouth and Delly doesn't say anything the entire time. She listens intently, nodding when she should even though I can barely make out her features in the night.

"But, she's so guarded that I just…I can't get through no matter what I try to do. It's like she enjoys solitude. Even her sister doesn't understand it."

Delly clucks her tongue. "Peeta, maybe you're looking at it the wrong way."

"What do you mean?"

Another sigh exits her lips. I'm just glad she no longer thinks I want to marry a dying girl. Now she knows who this girl I can't stop thinking about is and it feels like a weight off my shoulders but I'm nervous for what I've missed that Delly has apparently seen.

"I'm just…she lives with her uncle," Delly says. "That means her parents probably aren't in the picture anymore. And, so she doesn't go to school to meet friends but she's been in and out of a hospital filled with other kids. Maybe she's not a loner like you think, but she had friends and lost them."

For the first time, Katniss Everdeen makes sense. The whole time, I was just looking at the situation through rose-colored glasses. I thought that Katniss was guarding herself not because she was afraid to lose but because she didn't want to gain. I looked at her the way I wanted to see it, making it easier for me to forget if she was pushing me away because she didn't care.

I feel terrible for pushing her.

"Don't look so crestfallen," Delly says. "Just show her that you're not going anywhere. Maybe that will help."

* * *

Our unseasonably warm fall brings the bitterest January. Finnick returns on the seventh and my sessions start up again in anticipation for me to move onto Phase 3 of my rehabilitation. The final exercise Finnick introduces me to is the stork stand, which looks just as ridiculous as it sounds. I glide right through it, moving from assisted to unassisted.

One day, while I'm doing a ten-second stork stand with my eyes closed, I hear a soft giggle and, despite Finnick's insistence for me to keep them closed, I open them.

She stands off to the side by the door, as if she's not sure if she's allowed near me. Her arms are crossed over her front in a protective stance. Her hair is in her usual braid over her shoulder. However, on her face is the tiniest smile, hidden within a scowl that's falling apart on her face.

"I should start calling you lover boy," Finnick says.

He finds my glare hilarious because he breaks right down into chuckles, turning his back to help Johanna with a kid with a clubfoot. To be honest, Finnick's physical therapy doesn't just seem to be working on my knee alone, his rehab is benefiting my heart as well – and he knows it too. I'm never going to hear the end of this, especially when he tells his coworker, which is what I'm sure he's doing now under the appearance of helping the other kid.

When I nod, Katniss sits down in the chair before me, which has been empty for the few weeks Katniss has disappeared on me.

"Hi," I say.

"Hi."

The foot on my good leg taps nervously on the floor as she looks up from her feet. "Looks like you're doing well," she says, starting a conversation for once instead of me. My eyebrows jump into my hairline, burrowing deeper in my hair as she continues. "Before long you'll be running victory laps."

"I've been using the stationary bike," I tell her.

She smiles, the first genuine smile I've seen on her face, not hidden behind a single scowling line. "That's wonderful. You'll be better in no time."

"I've still got a long way to go."

It's true. I've still got at least another nine months to a year before I'm back to normal and can stop visiting Finnick.

We're silent for the rest of the session, the only noise shared between us being Katniss's encouragement. I go to sign out, expecting her to be gone when I turn around, but I'm surprised to see her waiting at the door, talking to Johanna as she leaves for her lunch break.

"Do you need a ride home?" I ask when I make my way over to her.

Katniss nods and I lead her to my truck. She hops in the passenger's side and, unlike the days I bring Prim home, the car isn't filled with banter from the Everdeen beside me. Katniss stares out the window as I drive through the city, stopping at her house and putting the car in park. She looks at the keys still in the ignition before looking up at me.

"Do you want to come in?"

My body temperature has just increased and I pull the keys out instantly. Katniss gives a breathy laugh before opening the door and walking toward the front entrance. Her walk is slippery with snow but I make it safely to her porch. Without words, she leads me up the stairs and opens the door to her room.

I now know her favorite color.

The walls are painted a light green and her bedspread, which is a single plain color, is also green, but darker. I look around, struck by how stark it is. Whereas my walls are covered with everything and anything from drawings to posters to school awards, Katniss's walls are bare. She has the minimum amount of furniture – a dresser, a desk, a trunk at the end of her bed – and everything is neat. Her desk has a MacBook with a lime green cover and beside it is a pile of books. Biology. American History. Textbooks because, I realize, her school is this room and that desk.

I didn't make my bed this morning and the thought runs through my head as I take in hers. It looks as if she's presenting it at a store – perfectly tucked with her pillows stacked. My mother would love her and make her teach me how to be organized. But something about her room strikes me as odd. She's neat, I suppose, but then it hits me like a load of bricks. Katniss's room is neat because it's nearly empty.

With an uncle like Haymitch Abernathy who could probably buy her the world, the room is shockingly bare. Her dresser has a hairbrush, a picture of her and Prim when they were younger, and a few elastic bands. The far corner houses an old wooden bow that looks like it was probably Haymitch's from years ago. Her bedside table has an alarm clock.

The shelving unit near her far window strikes me. It's a bookshelf that has a few bestsellers and textbooks but is empty otherwise. The top row, however, has what looks like a scrapbook and a picture framed in glass. It's a drawing done in charcoal of a girl placing dandelions in a hospital room chair. It only takes me a minute to realize this picture is the one I gave her for Christmas.

It looks better framed. I should have thought of that.

"You have a remarkable memory," Katniss says, walking to the bookshelf and taking the framed picture I drew in her hands.

I shake my head. "I don't remember that. I was sleeping. I just figured it was you."

"No," she says. Her fingers touch the glass lightly, looking up at me and then back down at the frame. "You remembered what I was wearing that day. I barely even remember."

I look down into the picture. She's in a shirt and jeans. If I had drawn it in color, the loose top she'd been in would have been red. The headband she'd had on was plaid and matched it. That day, her hair had been in two plaits instead of one. I think it stuck with me so much because later that day Prim had visited me and she'd been wearing something similar, only in navy, her hair also in two braids, her headband also plaid. She'd laughed because she told me she loved matching Katniss and Katniss rarely wore things that were girly at all. So, when she'd seen her sister while they were getting ready that morning, she'd changed her clothes quickly before going to school.

"I suppose it's easy to remember when the subject is as lovely as mine."

She sucks in a breath and shakes her head, setting the frame back down on the shelf. "I'm not all that lovely. I think you have me mistaken with Prim."

Being here, in her house, in her room, makes me particularly daring. I reach forward and take the end of her braid in my fingers. It's just as soft as I imagined. "You don't understand the effect you have," I tell her.

Again, she sucks in a breath and it's time for me to backtrack my forwardness.

"I'll be whatever you want me to be," I say. "Whatever that is, I'll do it. I'm not going anywhere unless you tell me to."

Her eyes glaze for a moment and then she shakes her head. "You scare me."

I take a step back, my fingers dropping her braid and my eyes wide at her whispered admission. I scare her? What have I done to scare her? I know I've bothered her. I've given her gifts when she doesn't want them. I've shown up in her life after not being in it for years. Sure, I can see annoying her. But scare her? How did I possibly scare her?

"How?" I ask, my voice cracking with nerves.

She swallows before looking up at me. "Because I don't want you to go anywhere."

* * *

We're friends, I think.

I still volunteer on Tuesdays and visit Finnick twice a week but the other two days I still drive the forty-five minutes it takes to get to the state capitol. Most of the time we do our homework. I'm usually sprawled out on the hardwood of her floor, biting my eraser trying to finish math problems, and she sits at her desk on her laptop inserting answers into an online spreadsheet or something. She tells me the only time she ever went to school were the few weeks of kindergarten back home. Other than that, she's been taught informally or taught by herself.

"How come you didn't go to school here?" I asked her once.

She shrugged. "I didn't like being teased."

I never asked her about school again.

Instead, I tried to learn more about her. I asked her questions about how she took her tea – she doesn't like hot tea or sweet tea but she'll drink iced tea if she has to – or if she sleeps with her windows shut or open – shut, even in the summer, which I find suffocating – or if she likes to paint, draw, or bake like me – she doesn't, by the way, and Haymitch nearly killed her after she set one of their cookbooks on fire while trying to help Prim make cookies for a bake sale two years ago. The talk is quiet and almost inane but by February I feel like I really know her rather than the girl I thought she was when I first found out she was still alive.

It does nothing to cure my feelings for her. If anything it only intensifies them.

I'm tying my shoelaces one day after rehab when she points to them. "You always do that," she says.

"What?"

"Double knot your shoelaces," she tells me. I never really noticed. It was just the way I was taught. "Haymitch never double knots his and he always ends up tripping when they come undone."

We both share a chuckle. I lead her to my truck, letting her get in before going around to my side. It's a Friday, so we won't see each other until Monday. And then Valentine's Day is on Tuesday, something I shouldn't even be thinking about.

"What do you do on the weekends?" Katniss asks, going to fiddle with my radio. She skips through three country stations until she settles on a station playing the top forty and then changes her mind and sets it to oldies. I roll my eyes and she sticks her tongue out at me.

"Nothing really," I say once she's stopped fiddling. I put the truck in drive and start toward her house, taking the long route Prim showed me last week. If Katniss notices my new route she doesn't say anything. "We used to play pick up soccer when the snow disappeared but…well, that's out now. I usually just hang around at the bakery, take a shift or two."

She nods and turns toward me. My eyes are focused on the road, making sure I don't take a wrong turn and get us lost in the side streets, but I can see her in my periphery vision.

"You know, I haven't been there since I got sick."

My heart starts pounding in my chest. Is she asking me to take her there sometime? Our town – well, my town, her old town – is nothing special. It's getting smaller and smaller by the day with the mines closed down and, because of its size, it's full of gossip, my mother being the ringleader. There's really not much _to_ show.

My mind flickers to Prim. Whenever she talks about Miner Falls she calls it home, even though she left when she was one. She introduced me to Haymitch, and various friends she's brought home from school, as a 'boy from back home'. Maybe Katniss feels the same way. The state capitol is where they live because it's near the hospital, it's where Haymitch lives, it's not their home.

"I can take you there."

Katniss nods her head. "I just have to tell Haymitch where I'm going."

Oh, she wants to go now. Okay. I try to think while she runs in the house to tell her uncle where she's going. My parents will just be leaving when we get there. They're heading out to some wedding banquet a few towns over to bring the cake and desserts. I could just drive around, show her the woods, get as close to where the old mine was before they collapsed it. I suppose I could introduce her to Delly and Hersh. I'll have the bakery to myself, maybe I could teach her how to bake and not catch things on fire.

Katniss jumps back in and smiles. "He said have fun."

"Great. Let's hit the road."

In the forty-five minutes it takes to get there, she changes the radio station a hundred times. Once we get off the highway, her head is glued to the window. I realize this is probably a big step for her. She didn't casually leave. When she left home, she wasn't vacationing. She went off to fight for her life and, even as young as she was, she probably figured she might not come back.

The town square is already festive for Valentine's Day, the shop windows filled with huge pink hearts and banners stretch from light pole to light pole. I drive around a bit, pointing out various places of interest. I show her the school, the road that leads to the old mine, the mayor's house. There are three churches on our route and the volunteer fire department. Finally, we stop in front of the bakery and I turn the truck off, smiling as she takes in the place she might still call home.

I step out of my side and go to open her door. She's still looking around when I offer up my hand. After a small intake of breath, she hesitantly reaches forward and locks her fingers in mine. I try to ignore the balls of fire shooting up my arm.

"Welcome home," I tell her.

She opens her mouth, as if to correct me, but then shakes her head. We stand in front of my truck for a minute, hands still entwined, and I'm trying to figure out what this means when I hear my dad shout from inside the bakery for me to come help. Katniss squeezes my hand, holding on tightly, and I find myself dreading the moment when I finally have to let go.

* * *

_The title of this story is taken from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas' villanelle _Do not go gentle into that good night. _The Christmas carol Peeta listens to in the truck is _Happy Xmas (War is Over) _by Celine Dion. Any and all lines that sound familiar to you, such as Katniss saying "You have a remarkable memory" come from Suzanne Collins and are not mine. Also, I've never had an ACL reconstructed, so all my information is coming from internet research. I'm sorry if it's not accurate._

_Let me know what you think! I'm halfway through Part II right now and hope to post it within the week. Let me know what you think so far!_


	2. Part II

Part II

_Easy is a refuge_

_And it's an easy place to be_

_But when the sun shines on you_

_What will the whole world think?_

-Needtobreathe, _The Reckoning_

Old Orchard is a town over from Miner Falls, but the land area is larger. By the time I drive from my home to its town center, it's really not too far from the capitol at all. Unlike our town, which was home to the miners that excavated coal before the mine was collapsed, the residents of Old Orchard have their own farms. Rue's family, for example, has over three hundred acres, all within town limits. It truly is a magnificent piece of land, located in the rolling hills where we can see for miles. Even the cows seem to appreciate the sun dipping below the trees, enveloping the sky in vibrant hues of red, yellow, and orange.

I suck in a breath of the open air before turning back around to step inside the barn.

There must be three hundred people packed in Rue's family's barn, all dancing and laughing away. There are even more outside, like adults smoking cigars and spitting tobacco away from the kids enjoying the line dances currently being performed. Rue's birthday seems to have attracted a good majority of the town, old and young alike. I've never seen anything like it.

I spot Prim quickly and watch as she waves, dancing energetically alongside a dark-skinned boy who introduced himself as one of Rue's various siblings. The boy can't be more than six, but he certainly seems to have a bit of a crush on my fair-haired companion. He hasn't left her side all night. Luckily Prim's a good kid. She hasn't minded much, if at all.

Tilting my wrist toward me, I sneak a look at my watch.

"Having that much fun?"

Rue giggles as I smile, trying to tell her I'm not looking because I'm bored. She rolls her eyes, patting my arm and shaking her head. "Has anyone ever told you that you're too nice?" she asks, winking at me.

"Yeah, my mother tells me all the time," I say. "So does my best friend."

The only difference is that my mother thinks being nice will ultimately get me in trouble while Hersh reaps the benefits of my inability to say no.

A soft laugh escapes her lips, barely audible over the band playing near the back of the barn. I had originally been surprised to receive my invitation to Rue's thirteenth birthday, but I realized that my original confidante had turned into a good friend. I could tell her things that I couldn't tell my friends back home, people that wouldn't understand. There are some things that outsiders don't appreciate.

"Well, I don't think we should worry about someone being too nice," Rue says, grabbing her cup off the table and smiling. "To be honest, I think we could all use a little bit more nice in the world. Thanks for coming, Peeta."

She lets out a four-note whistle and disappears into the crowd like a bird in flight.

I let the line dance finish before waving at Prim, tapping my watch. Her smile fades a bit but she tells Rue's brother goodbye and skips toward me, red-faced from dancing. It was a bad week. One of the boys that frequented the coloring table lost a long-fought battle with bone cancer and it hit home for all three of us. To have this party, a chance to try and forget, was a blessing.

Prim finds her favorite radio station as I pull the truck out of the farm's long driveway. We hit the highway and it won't be long. It's only about twenty or so minutes by highway before we hit the exit, another five to her house. The road's dead, as expected late on a Saturday in early April, so I keep sneaking looks to Prim. She tugs on her blond braid, looking down into her lap and letting out a breath.

"She's going to be fine," I tell her.

The twelve-year-old nods her head and manages a weak smile, but I know that nothing I say will get her mind off the boy, coincidentally the same age as herself, and Katniss's upcoming doctor's appointment at the beginning of May. Her mind will not rest until Katniss's routine bone marrow aspiration, a test Haymitch booked weeks ago, comes back clean.

"She's almost five years cancer-free. Isn't that, like, some kind of milestone?" I continue, not sure if I'm trying to convince her or myself.

I know it's a milestone. If you look at the history on my computer at home, you will come across no less than fifty websites dedicated to the explanation of Acute Myeloid Leukemia including, but not limited to, Wikipedia, the American Cancer Society, and Panem Children's Hospital's homepage. I have learned that five years is what is considered a huge milestone in the world of oncology. Katniss is even one of the _Inspired Stories_ on PCH's website. I've learned almost too much.

Prim nods her head. "I know," she says. "Katniss is safe, but I always worry."

We fall into silence, Prim humming along to the radio, until we reach our exit. As we're driving down the curved ramp, Prim turns to me. Out of the corner of my eye as I attempt to yield back into city traffic, I can see her smile has once again reached her eyes.

"Speaking of Katniss…"

Not this again.

After bringing Katniss to Miner Falls, we didn't speak for a week. She didn't show up for my rehab. I would stop by like usual on my days off but she would be locked in her room and I would do my homework at the kitchen island with Prim chattering amiable and Haymitch watching me, shaking his head. Then, as I was taking a jog around the hospital with Finnick, testing my knee's limits, Katniss showed up, sitting on the rock wall and waiting until our lap was finished.

"Victory lap," she'd said once Finnick went back inside. "Before long, you'll be sprinting."

Two weeks of happiness and, bam, as if she realized we were getting too close again – like our holding hands in Miner Falls – she locked herself out. It's becoming a game we play. One step forward, two steps back. Currently, I'm on a step forward.

"I already told you, Prim. It's up to her."

Prim rolls her eyes and leans her head on the window. "She's too stubborn for her own good," she mumbles.

Personally, I think Prim may want us together more than me. She's a hopeless romantic and, given the tween novels she reads, I know she's waiting for us to go frolicking off into the sunset together. But, that's not the way it's going to go with Katniss, if it's going to go _that_ way at all. Katniss needs slow, dependable, and steady, not fast, rushed, and unsure.

"She's guarded, but we knew that going in," I tease, hitting her arm lightly with my fist but keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us. Getting Prim into a car accident is not the way to win Katniss Everdeen.

I'm just not exactly sure _how_ to win her. She's not like other girls. Not in the slightest.

Prim sighs dramatically. "But she likes you! I know it!" she exclaims. "She just needs to stop listening to her own stupid theories."

"What stupid theories?" I ask.

"She doesn't believe in love."

I'm pretty sure I just heard my heart breaking in my chest, smashing into ten thousand pieces. I fell fast and hard for Katniss Everdeen. She, however, has not done the same and, if what Prim says is true, she has no intentions of ever doing so. My fingers tighten on the steering wheel and despite the darkness I can see them turning white. So, if she doesn't believe in love then what has she been doing with me? Whether it's intentional or not, these last few weeks she's been leading me on. It's one of our good weeks, so she'll come by rehab, we'll do homework together. She'll hold my hand for an extra second when I, very gentlemanly and I hoped romantically, help her out of my truck despite her eye rolls. Once, I caught her staring at me.

I thought I might have been getting at least somewhere. I knew getting into Katniss's heart wasn't going to be easy. I didn't think it would be impossible.

"She's so blind, though," Prim continues. Apparently, my silent mourning over a relationship that will never happen hasn't derailed any of her inner ramblings. "I mean, no offense, but it's so obvious that you like her. And she's just…ugh, sometimes I think she intentionally tries to make herself miserable."

Great, we're both masochists. That doesn't bode well for our situation moving forward.

When we pull to a stop in front of her house, Prim's rant is over and she looks up at me. "Are you coming in?" she asks, a hint of hopeful wonder in her voice.

I answer her by opening my door.

* * *

During our first shut out – for lack of a better term for how Katniss avoids me every so often – Prim told me the story of Haymitch and Maysilee.

"Aunt Maysilee was beautiful," Prim said.

I had stopped by after dropping her off on the Tuesday after I brought Katniss to Miner Falls. When we got there, we heard loud stomping footfalls and two angry voices from the second floor. Prim rolled her eyes and shook her head, but didn't say a word about the noise and instead went further into her story.

"She was our mother's best friend, just like Haymitch was Daddy's."

"So, Haymitch isn't actually your uncle?" I asked.

Prim shook her head and my mind started to spin. I had just assumed they were related to him, figuring that it was how he has custody of them. Neither Katniss nor Prim had ever divulged information on either of their parents before and I assumed that this meant they were dead and Haymitch, being next of kin, got the girls.

Apparently, I was wrong. There is a bigger story to Haymitch and his _nieces_ than meets the eye as I'm beginning to expect whenever I learn anything about Katniss Everdeen.

"Not by blood," Prim said, pulling out a pitcher of juice and pouring two glasses full. A loud bang echoed from upstairs. "Haymitch and Daddy lost touch for a long time, after Haymitch left Miner Falls. But, Maysilee was a nurse at Children's and Mother ran into her one day when Katniss first got sick. They were really our only family and they helped us a lot."

I knew the basics of the Haymitch Abernathy tragedy. When someone gets that famous, I suppose it's only natural for a town to gossip. He was our hometown hero and, when he lost his wife in a plane crash that killed forty-seven people and he walked out only to find comfort in a bottle, the town gossiped even more. My mother, for one, thought he was going to end up one of those story of famed celebrities turning to drugs and alcohol, dying too young.

There was another fierce crash upstairs and it made me wince, but Prim wasn't fazed at all. I could hear a grunt that sounded like Haymitch's but again it didn't faze her in the slightest.

"Well, I don't remember too much about her, but Aunt Maysilee's death really hit Uncle Haymitch hard. The fact that he was okay and everyone else died. You know he drinks, but it used to be really terrible," she said.

"What got him sober?" I asked, knowing Haymitch wasn't necessarily sober, but it was as good a word as I could come up with.

Prim nodded her head up to the ceiling. "Katniss," she said. "He stopped drinking when Katniss relapsed."

A door slammed above us and someone stormed down the steps. Katniss stomped right through the kitchen, not even noticing us, with Haymitch right on her heels. He stopped at the island and pulled out a glass and his favorite scotch.

He looked at me for a moment before addressing Prim. "Your sister is going to be the death of me," he said, chugging the scotch, pouring himself another, and then wandering out through the back door Katniss had stormed through. "She's raising my blood pressure!" he shouted, probably hoping Katniss would hear.

Prim giggled. "Okay," she admitted. "He stopped drinking _heavily_."

* * *

The house is pitch black when we walk in.

"Katniss?" Prim shouts. "Uncle Haymitch?"

There's no answer. I switch on the lights to see Prim looking at the message board they have. There are no messages saying where they've gone. Prim starts to shake and, I have to admit, my heart's beating a little too quickly for my liking. Katniss and Haymitch rarely leave the house. For them both to be gone is unusual and, for them not to leave Prim a message, oddly chilling.

Before I can say anything, Prim sprints up the stairs. On instinct, I follow behind her.

Katniss's door is open and we walk in. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, except the scrapbook I know she keeps on the top of her bookshelf is sprawled on the floor. It's odd because Katniss's room is always so neat and organized. Prim has since left Katniss's room and is running around like a chicken with her head cut off, searching for signs of some sort that will alert her as to why the two are gone. I walk in fully and look down at the page she has open.

It's none of my business. In fact, this is a private book, one Katniss hasn't even thought to show me, and looking through it seems to be an invasion of her personal space. However, I find myself curious and while Prim's racing footsteps echo through the house, I look down at the page she had obviously been looking at before she left.

It's not really a scrapbook in that it's not fancy and laid out like women in town would do. It's instead a collage of pictures, cut out into various shapes and thrown together without much apparent thought. However, the pictures always show the same duo, Katniss and a shockingly handsome boy that looks as if he could be her brother.

The first picture my eyes draw to is one of Katniss and the boy maybe a year or two ago. Her hair isn't quite as long as it is now but it is still in its trademark braid. She's sitting on the boy's lap as he stares at her, a look I know all too well on his features – longing. This boy, much like myself, has fallen into the trap of the lovely Katniss Everdeen.

I don't want to look any more, a stream of jealousy flooding through me, so I turn the page.

This page features a different duo, Katniss and a blond girl, but these pictures were taken long ago. Katniss and the girl are no more than five or six and both extremely ill. I've never seen pictures of Katniss ill before. She's either in a crocheted hat, usually with a white flower flopping on it, or has wisps of hair growing back in. The girl she sits with in all these pictures goes from having beautiful blond hair that snakes to her waist to hair chopped at her chin to no hair at all. Her skin, which is always pale, takes on a sickly pallor as her hair suddenly disappears.

The one I like the most is right in the center of the page. Katniss and her friend stare at the camera, both cross-eyed and fighting giggles. Katniss's cheeks are chubby like a chipmunk, to which I can only assume is due to the drugs coursing through her body, and her friend doesn't look nearly as sick as she does in some of the other ones.

"Peeta?"

I leap up and see Prim standing in the doorway, her eyes darting between me and Katniss's book.

"I, uh, I didn't mean – "

"It's okay," Prim says, stepping forward and taking the book off the floor. She shuts it and places it on Katniss's perfectly made bed.

She sighs and opens her mouth to say something, just as the door downstairs opens and Haymitch's guffaw engulfs the house. Both Prim and I sprint down the stairs, only to stop at the open banister.

"Katniss!" Prim exclaims. "What happened?"

Katniss is on crutches, her foot in an air cast. She's glaring at Haymitch, who's still laughing. "It's all his fault!" she hisses.

"Hardly, sweetheart," Haymitch says. "I called you for dinner, you tripped down the stairs. How is that in any way my fault?"

"I wouldn't have tripped if you didn't leave your stupid stuff all over the house!" she screams. "I'm more of an adult than you are!"

Haymitch rolls his eyes. "I sat in an emergency room for three hours with a growling stomach to make sure you didn't break any of your precious little bones," he says, walking toward her and smirking as he taps her nose. She grits her teeth. "And then I walked myself up to the cafeteria to trudge through their late night snack foods while you were getting that stupid x-ray to see if there was anything salvageable to feed my little princess for dinner. I feed you, I make sure you're not broken, and you're standing there calling me an unfit guardian? You spoiled rotten brat."

Prim descends the stairs and carefully wraps her arms around Katniss's waist. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, just a sprained ankle and a bruised tailbone," Katniss tells her. Her eyes flicker over Prim to me. "Doctors say I should be off _my_ crutches in less than a week."

"She's just a drama queen," Haymitch says over his shoulder as he walks toward the kitchen.

Katniss sticks out her tongue in his direction.

I roll my eyes and fight a laugh, but Prim is still holding on to Katniss as if she's afraid her sister will disappear if she lets go. Katniss notices this and gently tugs on Prim's braid. "I'm okay, little duck. I promise."

"When you didn't leave a note, I thought the worst," Prim mumbles into Katniss's side, refusing to remove any contact.

Katniss leans down to kiss the top of Prim's head, moving the hand she had used to tug on Prim's braid back to her crutch. "Prim, you're such a worrywart," she says.

Although her voice is light and airy, her eyes show her true emotion. She's upset, most likely due to the fact that Prim gets scared when a normal twelve-year-old shouldn't. She would make a horrible actress.

"And you probably worried Peeta for no good reason," Katniss continues.

This perks Prim right up, just as her sister intended. She carefully lets go of Katniss and then launches herself at me, using all the force she wanted to use with Katniss and more. We nearly topple over.

"Oh, Peeta! I'm sorry. I was just so scared!"

"Don't worry about it," I say, listening to Katniss crutch into the living room. Once I know she's out of hearing range, I kneel down to whisper in Prim's ear. "Everyone gets scared sometimes."

Prim nods and looks up at me, giving a small smile that tells me she knows I was scared as well. She lets go and walks into the living room, asking Katniss if she can look at her ankle and I follow her, waving goodbye as I head back to my truck.

I'm surprised when I see Katniss's face. It's almost as if she doesn't want me to leave.

* * *

When Finnick sees her on crutches, his face drops.

"What the hell did you do?" he asks, completely forgetting about me and walking to Katniss. He sits her down in a chair and eyes her foot, looking up as she gasps a little when her bruised tailbone hits the seat. He gingerly takes off the air cast and shakes his head. "That's a beautiful sprain you got there, sugar."

I walk over to look. Finnick's right. Katniss's ankle looks like a balloon and is riddled with fierce purple blotches that inch up her leg and over the top of her foot. I can only imagine what her tailbone must look like if this is her sprained ankle.

"Icing it?" Finnick asks. Katniss nods. "Keeping it elevated? Not stepping on it – "

"I'm not stupid, Finnick," she interrupts.

Finnick lets out a laugh. "Yeah, maybe, but you're stubborn. Something tells me you're not going to scream for someone to get you something if you can do it yourself."

Her head drops to her lap.

"That's what my crutches are for," she insists.

Finnick rolls his eyes and looks up at me. "She's my worst patient," he says, jerking his thumb at her. "Didn't do anything I told her to do. Ended up falling face first into her bedside table because she wouldn't use a walker."

I look to Katniss. She's never told me why she needed physical therapy in the first place and I can tell she doesn't want to because she's suddenly finding her lap very interesting. Finnick replaces her air cast and shakes his head.

"My first patient. Almost regretted my career choices when I got this one," he says. Then he winks and pats Katniss's knee affectionately. "She crept up on me though. The best ones always do."

When I look back at Katniss one final time before Finnick guides me back to the plastic obstacle course, she still doesn't look at me.

* * *

As we go to leave, Mr. Crane slinks in and makes a beeline for me. He smiles warmly, covering calculating eyes and a firm interest in the company board. He nods his head to Katniss and then turns to me.

"Are you free for a moment to speak with Mr. Snow?" he asks.

I look down at Katniss. She still won't look me in the eye, her shoe apparently so much more interesting. "I can call Haymitch," she mumbles.

"No," I rush to say. To be honest, I want to give her a ride home because I'm afraid if she calls Haymitch she's going to disappear into one of her shut outs again. I don't want her to shut me out, not now when I feel like I'm just beginning to piece her together. Not now when I want her to know it's okay to let me in. Like Delly said, I have to assure her that I'm not going anywhere. "Sorry, Mr. Crane. I have to take Katniss home."

"Nonsense," Mr. Crane says, nodding to Katniss again. "Katniss Everdeen is always welcome in Mr. Snow's office."

My eyebrows leap into my hairline. Katniss sucks in a breath. But, ultimately, we're escorted to the top floor, which is lined with offices. The one in the very back, which no doubt has a beautiful view, belongs to one Mr. C. Snow, President. It says so on the brass plaque on his door. Crane tells us to go in and I open the door for Katniss to crutch herself inside.

"Ah, Mr. Mellark!" He has his back to us but turns when the door is shut. He eyes Katniss greedily. I don't really like it. "Miss Everdeen! What a surprise."

"The surprise is all mine, believe me."

I'm beginning to wonder if the temperature drop in the room is just my mind playing games with me.

Snow raises an eyebrow at her foot but doesn't say anything. Instead, he turns to me and a large grin snakes it's way to his face. "I didn't know you two were friends," he says. "This is wonderful."

"Wonderful?" I ask.

"Yes, well, I wanted to ask you up here to see if we could use your story when Mr. Crane and I present the final proposal for the rehabilitation program."

I don't really understand why he needed to see me. He already made me sign a waiver for the use of my story and opinions on the program for Snow's proposal. When I don't answer, Snow continues.

"We'd like for you to deliver it to the board," he says. He looks at my legs and a smirk fills his features. "I'm sure just by walking into the room, the board will see the benefits of what it has done for you."

I know what this is about for me. Snow wants to exploit my injury for his own personal agenda. An inpatient rehabilitation program at a privately owned hospital will bring in a pretty penny. What he thinks is so wonderful about Katniss being here as well intrigues me and scares me at the same time. Snow isn't an imposing character in his appearance. He's small with white hair, little beady eyes, and a white rose on his lapel.

"And, if you would, Miss Everdeen, the opinion of a former patient, who has seen first hand how much our program is improving, would be exquisite," Snow continues. "Especially one with a story such as yours. So…touching, after all."

My cue to nod comes when Katniss smiles. "Of course."

* * *

We don't speak again until we're in my truck, the keys in the ignition but the engine still silent. Katniss goes to look out the window but I reach forward and cup her chin with my hand. My stomach burns with hunger, imagining that if this was any other girl I would be kissing her, while Katniss shivers.

"What was that?" I ask, flicking my eyes in the direction of the hospital.

Katniss takes a deep breath. "My – "

And then she does the one thing I never thought I would see. Katniss Everdeen bursts into tears. I don't know what to do except reach over and pull her toward me. She rests her head on my chest and my chin lies in her hair. I whisper soothing words my father used to say when I was upset as a little kid. Once her sobs have quieted to sniffles, she doesn't pull away. Instead, she pulls me closer.

"I just want to forget," she says. "Is that so hard for everyone to believe? Every time there's a telethon or benefit or anything to promote the hospital, Snow wants me to tell my story. And, I can't not say yes, not after everything this hospital's done for me. But, I just want to be normal, you know? I just want to forget I was ever sick and move on with my life."

"Katniss, your story is amazing," I tell her, not trying to defend Snow, but realizing just why he likes using her. "You're alive. You're beautiful. You're an inspiration."

She shakes her head against my chest. "My story's not amazing," she whispers.

"Yes, it is," I say. I remember reading her _Inspiring Stories_ piece. The fact that she's still alive is a miracle in and of itself, any of the families that lost their child to cancer would attest to it. Sure, I don't know everything. I don't know why she had to go to physical therapy. I don't know what happened to her parents. But I do know that she's fought valiantly for her life and won.

"It's not," she insists. She pulls away from me and shakes her head. "Look, you don't deserve this. You deserve someone who can fall in love with you. I can never do that. So, just drop me off and we can go our separate ways."

I have been clinging desperately to the hope that Prim had been lying. With those words, Katniss has taken to my heart with a baseball bat. It's bruised and broken, dropping passed my stomach, down to the feet.

"I'm sorry for leading you on."

Now she's stomping on it, her boots jumping up and down until it paints the floor red.

"Why can't you?" I start willing my mouth to shut up but it's not connecting with my brain or my broken heart. It's even quivering slightly in a not-so-manly voice that I'm embarrassed to know is coming from my mouth. However, my mouth just keeps running, not listening to me. "Don't tell me you don't believe in love. Prim told me about your theory. And, to be honest, it sounds stupid to me."

Katniss turns to me and glares. "Love just hurts you in the end."

"No, it – "

"Yes, it does!" Katniss screams. "Haymitch almost killed himself because of it. My parents…when your parents hate each other, scream and yell and threaten divorces and – "

"They do!" I don't know what's taken over me, but I'm yelling too. "You think, just because I didn't get affected by the cluster, that my life is so wonderful? My mother's a psycho and if she had somewhere to go she'd of left years ago. My parents can't stand each other!"

Katniss looks taken aback for a moment, as if she never expected me to yell at her. I never expected it either, but now that it's done, I feel a weight lift off my shoulders. Katniss takes a breath and looks up to the ceiling.

"You're not the reason your parents fight."

Any and all relief I felt at yelling disappears in a matter of seconds. Katniss starts playing with her fingers and I wait. I don't say anything and will her to get this off her chest.

"I was," she continues. "Money was tight. You know, Miner Falls isn't known for millionaires. When I got sick it was devastating and my parents…they were so in love with each other but…"

I reach forward and grasp her hand, urging her to go on.

She inhales. "Once they closed the mine, my dad lost his job. He had to work three part-time jobs just to put food on the table for Prim and make sure I could still get treatment. He hated that he couldn't see me because he didn't want me to…" She lets out a breath. "He had too much pride to make my mom work. When I went into remission things got back to normal but, you know what they say, a dying kid either brings you together or it tears you apart. My parents were _too_ in love. It could only tear them apart."

Her hand shakes under mine. "One night my mom had to make _that _call. They had fought earlier that day. I remember it and then the next thing I remember is I woke up in ICU with Haymitch sitting in a chair telling me my parents were dead. I was twelve."

She looks up at me and I shake my head. "You don't have to tell me all this," I say.

"You wanted to know," she says, but it's not spiteful. It's almost solemn. "The call my mom made that night was to tell my dad to hurry to the hospital because the doctors weren't sure if I was going to make it. My dad rushed and ran a red light. He died instantly and my mother was so overwhelmed. She just lost her best friend and her husband, she thought she was going to lose her daughter too, so she OD'd on my pain pills."

We sit in silence. There's really nothing I can say.

"So, that's why I don't believe in love," she concludes. "People want it because they think it's so great, but it just makes you dependent. Then it ruins you. I've always been dependent on my doctors, my parents, Haymitch. Now, I can finally live my own life. I don't want to be dependent on anyone. I like it this way."

"Don't you ever want to get married, have kids?"

She shakes her head. "I never want to bring a child into this world. It's a terrible place and once it's born there's no way to protect it, not from anything." She turns to me and gives a tiny smile. "So you, Peeta Mellark, deserve someone with a heart wide open, just like yours. Mine's clamped shut so don't waste any more time and energy trying to open it."

I don't want to accept this. I can see why she doesn't want to open her heart. She's scared. Scared she'll grow attached and lose, just as Delly predicted. Katniss's story is dark and lonely and it makes me feel horrible, imagining Katniss at twelve, believing she's the reason both her parents are dead. Seeing her mother kill herself. Knowing her father did everything to be with her, to save her, and in the end fate intervened. I think of myself at twelve, carefree and thinking my parents' petty arguments about taxes and money were bad. However, despite all of this, I refuse to believe her heart will be closed forever.

"What if it opens?" I ask. It's a desperate plea.

She rolls her eyes, but her voice is only breath, as if she wants to believe what she's saying just as much as I do. "Then I'll let you know."

* * *

I do the board meeting. Katniss does not. President Snow doesn't seem too concerned with Katniss being missing, especially when the board members all take well to my story. It's a little deceptive. Mr. Crane's brief bio slide on his fancy slide show makes it seem like the prognosis on my leg was much worse than it actually was, but I just say the things I was scripted to say. Finnick_ did_ help me. I _did _find it convenient not to have to drive forty-five minutes both ways every day. Everything I have to say is true.

Katniss doesn't come to my rehab. I don't bug her at home. Prim doesn't question me about it at all, nor does she ask me in on Tuesdays. I'm not sure if Katniss told her anything or if she just senses the tension, but I'm glad she doesn't ask because I don't particularly want to tell.

I feel like I have a lead plate on my chest just thinking about everything Katniss has gone through and the fact that I yelled at her. She shouldn't have had to tell me anything. But, I find myself missing her more now that she's gone than I ever did during any of her shut outs. It's probably because I know she's not coming back this time. Despite being able to hang out with my friends instead of driving to the capitol those two days I used to spend solely with her, I've never felt lonelier.

Part of me wants a wacky result when the reaping happens because I know it will draw Katniss back to me, thinking she owes me for the letters I wrote her all those years ago, just like she thought she owed me to help with my rehab. But, I've never been that lucky. My blood work came back perfect. I don't have cancer. I should be thrilled, and I know it's horrible for me to be wishing a death sentence on myself, but I wanted to be reaped this year. It just makes me that much guiltier.

I hit myself in the head with a cake pan just to see if it will make me sane again.

"Dude, that's two years in a row everyone's been clear. Maybe they'll stop pricking us!" Hersh says, sitting at the decorator's table, fiddling on his cellphone.

"Yeah," I mumble.

Hersh lifts his eyes from his phone and stares at me. "What's the matter?" he asks. "You've been bumming for a month."

I don't answer and continue icing cupcakes with white floppy flowers that remind me of the crocheted hat Katniss wore in her scrapbook pictures. I'm hopeless. Really, this is pathetic.

"Did you and Katniss break up?"

The question makes me snort. Since I told Delly about Katniss at New Years, it didn't stay quiet long that I was not only friends with the legendary Katniss Everdeen but that I also housed a huge crush on her and possible thought I was in love with her. Hersh thought I was stupid. Delly thought it was a bit rash. I maintained that Katniss was suggesting it might be a relationship, based on her interactions with me. I didn't tell them anything else, although I know they assumed the best.

Now I know she was leading me on and had no intentions of ever entering a relationship with anyone, myself included. I feel stupid, to say to least.

I don't have to say anything for Hersh to shake his head. "Dude, there's other fish in the sea. In fact, that's a very pretty fish called Fern Foster who has been asking about you."

I really don't care who Fern Foster is or if she's been talking about me or not. Fern Foster isn't my concern. My concern is that I'm willing to wait forever for Katniss's heart to open. Again, I'm hopeless. I've accepted it. I'm never going to get married because the only girl I'd ever marry is dead set against it.

There's got to be some sort of way for me to get over this.

My phone vibrates on the table and I shake my head, knowing it's Delly. I don't feel like talking to Delly right now and having her say she told me this was a bad idea. My phone stops ringing and I go back to the cupcake. Then it starts up again.

"Just answer it," Hersh hisses. "Maybe it's Katniss begging you to come back to her."

I wish. Maybe…

My arm stretches abnormally fast and I groan, seeing Prim's smiling face on the caller ID. I almost silence it, but something sits wrong in my stomach. I'm upset with Katniss, not Prim and shouldn't take it out on her. It's not her fault.

"Hey, Prim," I say.

"Peeta!"

My throat constricts. Prim is crying. Sobbing, actually, and it makes my hands tremble so much I'm afraid I'll drop the phone. Quickly, my mind runs through things she could be crying about. One of their geese died. One of her favorite kids in the reading room is dying. I know before my list tells me exactly what is going on.

My heart races in my chest. "Where are you?"

"Home," she sniffs. "Uncle Haymitch was…going to come...but I told him...to stay. Will you…get me?"

"Of course," I tell her, my eyes flooding with my own tears. "How is she?"

"She hasn't…she doesn't know." Prim chokes out another sob. "Just...come. Hurry."

The line disconnects and I'm out of my chair and out the front door before it does. My eyes spill water. Here I was, wishing myself ill for my own personal gain when other people are actually dying. While I was hoping for a wacky reading, Katniss's bone marrow aspiration came back with abnormal results. Prim didn't need to say it for me to know.

"Peeta…Peeta!" I'm opening the door to the truck before I finally turn around. "Peeta!"

Hersh pulls the keys out of my hands. I'm about to yell at him, tell him to leave me alone, scream that I need to go, when he pushes me out of the way so he can sit in the driver's seat. I raise an eyebrow but he doesn't say anything. Hersh was never good with emotion. Seeing me like this probably threw him for a loop.

"You can't drive. You'll crash," he says, not to anyone in particular and certainly not to me, as he drives toward the highway. "Just tell me where to go."

* * *

Hersh comes back from the cafeteria with three steaming cups – one coffee, two with tea bag strings hanging out – and a brownie covered in plastic wrap. He holds the dessert out to Prim, but she's cried herself to sleep on my lap, her face buried in my shirt, while we wait for Haymitch to return.

Katniss woke up for a fraction of a second before they put her back under in order to perform a lumbar puncture. Haymitch said the doctors were only doing the spinal tap as a precaution, making sure none of the leukemia cells they found in her bone marrow had entered her cerebrospinal fluid. If they do find any, she'll have an MRI done to see how the cancer has spread to the soft tissues of her spinal cord and brain.

It occurs to me that her body is rebelling against her. It makes me wonder when it started, if the beast was already gaining strength inside her when we first met or if it grew just as our friendship grew, as if it was just waiting for an audience, waiting for us to meet.

Haymitch enters the waiting room, takes a look at Prim, and lets out a breath. I don't know what to do so I look to him for advice. He's been through this before. He knows how to survive. Right now, I feel like I'm drowning.

He kneels down in front of me and gently pats Prim's back. She wakes instantly and turns around, her arms leaving my neck to wrap around his.

"How bad is it?" she asks.

Haymitch kisses her forehead and shakes his head. "Why don't you go see her?" he says. "But, you got be strong, blondie. She's scared as hell."

Prim shakily steps out of my lap and shivers as a nurse that followed Haymitch takes her shoulder and gently guides her away. As soon as she's around the corner, the attention turns from Prim to me, Haymitch giving me a stern look.

"Alright, boy, you listen to me," he says, pointing a finger in my face. "This isn't going to be pretty. It's not going to be like any Lifetime movie. It's going to be ugly and if you can't handle that, get out now."

"I understand, I volunteer – "

"No, you don't understand," Haymitch says, staring at me with fire in his eyes. "She's a mess and I can send in any amount of expensive drugs, any number of specialists, and it still might all be for naught. If you say you want to be there for her, you got to be there. You can't bail when it gets rough and it will. Trust me."

"Is she going to die?" I ask.

Haymitch's face drops. He lets out a breath and runs a hand over his face. "I don't know."

I nod and try to swallow the growing lump in my throat. "Do you want a breather?" I ask. Haymitch has been here for hours, sitting in the waiting room through Katniss's first test, going in while she was in recovery, pacing during the spinal tap and finally going to her when she came to. He must be exhausted, emotionally as well as physically.

"It must be hard for you," I continue, thinking of Prim sitting with Katniss. Haymitch must see what I see, an uncertain future. "Being in there right now."

He thinks for a moment and gives a dark chuckle. "Oh, I think we can count on it being unbearable wherever I am."

An emotion flashes across his face that I'm sure is written all over mine as well. Pain. However, he masks it easily, nodding his head down the hall. "If you're in, go on down. As much as she can't stand it, she's going to need a friend for when blondie and I get on her nerves."

I stand from my chair and he quickly takes my seat, turning toward Hersh, who I had forgotten was here. He raises an eyebrow. "Who the hell are you?"

"Peeta's ride," Hersh says, the look of momentary awestruck at being addressed by Haymitch Abernathy similar to the look on my face when I first met the Everdeen guardian.

Haymitch shakes his head and, without asking, reaches for one of the steaming cups Hersh placed on the table. He lifts it to his lip, takes a swig, and nearly spits it out on the floor. He eyes me for a minute, looks down at the tea meant for me, and looks back up.

"No sugar, boy?" he asks. When I shake my head, he groans. "I have to do everything myself around here."

He staggers up and walks toward the lounge that I'm sure he's not supposed to be in. But, since he's Haymitch Abernathy, I suppose he can do whatever he wants. Or, at least, he thinks he can. Hersh looks at me with wide eyes and I laugh.

"You get used to it," I say before looking down the hallway. I have to find someone to direct me.

I have to see Katniss.

* * *

Katniss only ever wrote me herself once. She scribbled her response in purple crayon and the words weren't nearly as well crafted as that of her mother's. Her sentences were short, sometimes just fragments, but to my five-year-old self they painted a picture, a picture of what Katniss Everdeen was really like.

And she seemed like a girl I really wanted to get to know.

I kept that letter hung up on my wall, right next to the mockingjay she drew for me. I would read it at night, right before I went to bed, so it would remind me to hope and pray for her to get better. At the time, I didn't know how else to help her.

Now, I still don't really know how to help her.

I knock on the wall before I fully enter. Katniss and Prim are both in the hospital bed. Katniss is attached to IV poles and machines, some beeping, some not. Prim has weaseled her way around the wires to wrap herself around her sister's waist, her head resting on Katniss's arm so she can look up with adoration at the sister I know she loves more than life itself. Katniss, in true Katniss fashion, is wearing a scowl as Prim giggles at something I've missed.

When I knock again, Prim turns around and smiles. "Hi, Peeta," she says, any ounce of the terrified twelve-year-old she was only moments before replaced with a seasoned warrior, a soldier to reassure the general that all isn't lost. She looks back up at Katniss and kisses her cheek before sitting up. "I'm going to check on Uncle Haymitch."

"Okay, little duck," Katniss says. Prim makes a face and Katniss smiles. "What? Too old to be a little duck anymore?"

A flash of remorse spreads across Prim's face, as if she's realized her sole purpose in life is to do whatever Katniss needs her to do and she's just failed. She looks down at her shoes and quacks softly, but turns toward me so Katniss can't see the tears in her eyes. Then, she rushes out of the room, leaving Katniss to sigh. I keep my spot by the door, waiting for my commands. Like Prim, my purpose is to do as Katniss wants, what she thinks I can do to help her survive. I'm not sure if there's anything I can do physically, but Dad always says laughter is the best medicine. Maybe, just maybe, I can aid her once more, this time with myself instead of my letters.

Katniss looks up at me and shakes her head. "I'm not going to keel over yet," she says. "You can come closer."

So, I do. I sit down on the edge of her bed, resting my hand next to hers, free for her to take if she feels the need. At first, we don't do anything. We sit in silence, listening to the beeps of the machine alerting us that she's still alive. In my head they sound like ticking time bombs and I wish for a moment they were, that way I could open them up like on television shows and find the red wire, cutting it in half and shutting it off, saving Katniss from blowing to bits.

Katniss pulls me out of my thoughts when she takes my hand. I'm sure I can see the fear flowing from her head down her arm into my hand. We both share the burden of her survival.

"Peeta?" she asks and, for the first time since our blow out, I look into her eyes. The mesmerizing puddles of gray that flicker with light, so pale in color they nearly blend into the white surrounding them. They show her every emotion and this is why she's such a terrible liar.

"Katniss, I'll do anything," I say when I really mean _I'm sorry for yelling, I'm sorry for not calling, I'm sorry you're dying. I'm sorry there's nothing I can do to keep you from this challenge placed on your shoulders. I'm sorry I can't take your place._

She nods once. "Will you stay with me?"

I don't know what she means. I'm sure I'm not allowed to stay long and surely she doesn't mean overnight. Perhaps she means to come by like I did those months when we were getting along. Maybe she just means encouraging her like she did for me.

Really, in the end, it won't matter what she means. I'm not here to think. I'm here to do as she asks until she walks right out of this hospital with a clean bill of health because I refuse to see any other alternative.

So, when I say, "Always," I mean it.

* * *

They admit Katniss that night so they can start her on a regime of chemotherapy first thing in the morning. I stay until visiting hours are over. Haymitch is a complete wreck as he sets a sleeping Prim down on the pullout couch in Katniss's room, the same type of couch my father slept on in another section of the hospital when I screwed up my knee. He beelines it to a chair next to Katniss's bed shortly after, sitting and staring at her as she rests, shot up with a small amount of sedative so she can relax and sleep before her big day.

I take one final look before going out into the waiting room. Hersh looks up from his phone when he sees me and he stands, stretching after sitting in the chair for hours. I open my mouth to thank him, but he holds out his hand to stop me.

"You would do the same for me," he says and, in a rare show of emotion, he pulls me into a brief hug. "I'm so sorry."

We don't say anything else on our car ride home.

My mother is already in bed when we get there, but my dad is sitting at the kitchen table, obviously waiting for me and trying to make it seem like he's enthralled with a crossword puzzle in the newspaper he's already finished. When I walk in, he stands up, and I feel like a little kid again when I walk into his arms.

He doesn't even get a single word out before I burst into tears. He pulls me into the living room, sitting us down on the couch, and starts coddling me like I am five-years-old again and scraped my knee on the gravel playing baseball in the street. He rocks me back and forth, kisses my forehead, pats my head, all the things I realize mothers are suppose to do but mine hasn't done for years. I feel embarrassed to be seventeen and bawling my eyes out to my father, but I won't be the first seventeen-year-old in this house to do so. Rye's been comforted like this before, as has Leaven. I suppose it's my turn.

Only I'm not crying about losing a state championship, a rejection letter from my top choice school, or even a break-up with a girlfriend. Whereas my brothers only leaked tears – or in the case of Rye's team losing states, letting out a few streams – I think all the water in my body will run dry until there's nothing left because I'm not crying over something petty.

"She can't die, Dad," I say, my voice weak, my breathing erratic, but my tears slowing.

He shushes me and the water works begin once more. I let myself fall apart tonight, because tomorrow, just as Haymitch told Prim, I have to be strong for Katniss. There will be no weaklings on her team.

* * *

I have never skipped school before. With my mother being the head of the PTA in a town small enough that word of everything I do always seems to get back to her, it really wasn't much of an option. I've never even thought about it. However, halfway through my first class, I can't stand it anymore. I stand up, gather my books, and walk out, ignoring the exclamation of my teacher, Hersh and Delly's wide eyes, and the gossip of every other student in my class. It will get back to my mother, but at this point I don't care.

My usual route takes an extra fifteen minutes with rush hour traffic.

Effie has to call ahead to get me cleared to go up and Haymitch apparently added me to Katniss's list of okayed individuals. I don't have to check in with Effie again and can just head up before going to see her. Now, I have to check in with another receptionist at the nurses' station on the oncology floor.

The woman, whose nametag identifies her as Venia, eyes me a moment as if she's sizing me up before handing me my badge that will allow me to wander the floor. She warns me that Katniss may not be back in her room yet but that I'm free to wait there if she isn't. When I get there, I notice that her room isn't empty like Venia expected and, instead, is bursting with noise.

"Peeta!" Prim exclaims, jumping off the side of Katniss's bed and running toward me.

"Hey, girls," I say, bracing for impact. Prim launches herself on me. I look up at Katniss and see that she's chuckling. "How are you?"

She shrugs. "I'm okay."

"She had surgery this morning to put in a central line and she's already got two units of blood in her," Prim states, pulling away to tell me. "She's ready to go."

I swallow loudly and I'm sure everyone's heard it. "Transfusion?" I ask.

Katniss nods. "My red blood cell count was low," she says and then she turns to Prim. I can vaguely hear doors opening and closing behind us and the hurried speech of hospital workers in the hallway. "Prim was there the whole time and she was so good. Did she tell you that she wants to be a nurse?"

Prim blushes crimson, her entire face the color of a tomato, and she bashfully looks at her shoes when Katniss praises her.

"She didn't tell me," a deep voice says.

Prim's eyes light up and she lifts her face from the floor. "Cinna!" she says.

I turn around to see a male nurse. He winks at Prim before patting her head, walking into the room and sidestepping me to get to Katniss's bed. Unlike most of the other nurses I've seen, Cinna's scrubs are not Disney-themed, nor do they have happy cartoon images. His scrubs are all black with gold trim. On anyone else, it would make me terrified but his smile is so warm when he sits down on the edge of Katniss's bed, it's hard to deny how much he cares.

He leans right into her face. "Remember, head high. Smile," he says, patting her cheek. "I'm still betting on you."

"After all this time?" she jokes. "I would have thought you'd choose someone with better odds."

Cinna shakes his head. "I have too much money riding on you, so don't let me down now." He winks and stands, going to one of the machines and adjusting something on it. "So, I mean, I know I haven't seen you in a while, but you forgot to mention this morning that you have a boyfriend."

Prim starts to giggle and I'm pretty sure I'm the same shade of red as Katniss. She gives her nurse a look of astonishment and Cinna raises his hands in surrender. As if it couldn't get any worse, Haymitch walks in at that precise moment and I'm sure I'm going to be banned.

"She better not," he says with a gruff chuckle. Although he's laughing, his face is void of any type of smile. I'm not sure if it's a joke or if he's serious. "I didn't clear him to be a boyfriend."

Katniss has gone purple she's so embarrassed and Cinna laughs. He takes her face in his hands and chuckles. "You sweet, sweet girl. I'm just teasing you," he says. "You haven't changed at all."

Once her face has lightened, Katniss introduces me to Cinna, her favorite nurse. "This is my _friend_ Peeta," she tells him. "Be nice."

I try my hardest not to let my heartbreak show on my face at her introduction of me. I should be appreciating the fact that we're friends again, not still mourning our lack of common future goals. Ultimately, I want the whole package – wife, kids, maybe even a dog or something. Katniss doesn't want kids nor does she have any desire to be someone's wife. However, thoughts of these future kids of mine have gone from curly-haired blonds to little girls with dark hair in braids and little boys with pale gray eyes practically overnight. I have fallen hopelessly and far too deeply for her than a seventeen-year-old should.

While lost in thought, I didn't notice Katniss's room begin to fill with people and then empty. I stay with Prim on the couch while Katniss goes down to the treatment room with Haymitch and Cinna after her oncologist came in for a brief chat.

"Dr. Heavensbee loves Katniss," Prim says as she beats me in poker for the third time. "He's going to get her in remission. I know he will."

I nod my head, hoping Prim's right. Knowing Prim's right. Katniss will be okay. We stare at each other while I reshuffle the cards. We're both in denial that anything bad will happen to her.

"He's the head oncologist," Prim continues, nervously rambling. It's making me nervous too. My good leg is bouncing up and down on the floor. Her voice shakes as she keeps up her mantra that Dr. Heavensbee won't give up on Katniss, even if it looks bleak. It may be helping her, but by the time she segues into a story about one of her school friends, all of her nerves have transferred to me.

_It's going to be okay. She's going to be okay. I'm not going to let her not be okay._

I'm still repeating this in my head when the door opens and Katniss walks in, followed by Haymitch and a nurse mumbling behind her, clearly upset Katniss wouldn't sit in the empty wheelchair she's pushing. The nurse puts the wheelchair next to her bed and tells Haymitch to press the call button if Katniss needs anything, and leaves with a shake of her head. Prim leaps up off the couch and helps Katniss into her bed, despite the gripes Katniss makes that she can do it herself.

"Are you nauseous yet?" Prim asks. I can definitely see her being a nurse one day, even if Katniss hadn't told me earlier about her sister's future career plans.

"Not yet," Katniss says, pushing Prim away, not wanting to be fussed over. Prim backs off but still remains at the side of her bed. "Why don't you and Haymitch go get lunch, all right?"

Prim eyes the clock. It's a little passed eleven, but her stomach has been growling for the last ten minutes. Prim's about to argue, but Haymitch nods his head. "Come on, blondie," he says. "I need coffee."

"Yeah," Katniss agrees. "He's not usually awake this time of day."

Haymitch glares at her. "Hush it," he says.

Prim nods her head and sighs. As she walks passed me, she smiles. "Do you want anything?" I shake my head and she goes to Haymitch, taking his hand and walking with him out of the room. Haymitch rolls his eyes but I notice he doesn't withdraw his hand.

Without them in the room, I don't know what to say. My words, which seem to work with everyone else, always seem to fail me when it comes to Katniss. Maybe it's because Katniss is so bad with them herself. Maybe it's because I don't want to say the wrong thing. So, instead of speaking, I act. I sit down on the side of her bed and hold out my hand, offering her comfort and encouragement.

She looks at it for a minute and then smiles. "Feel free to ditch when I start blowing chunks," she says, but she still inches her hand forward slowly until she laces our fingers together. I know it's not because she's attracted to me – my mind suddenly bringing me back to the boy in her scrapbook and a fierce jealousy floods me – but I allow myself to take comfort in it.

"Eh, you blow chunks, I'll probably be right there with you," I joke. The only thing I really know how to do in this situation is make fun of myself, so I guess this is the route I'm taking. "We'll do it together."

She shakes her head but she does crack a smile. And then we shoot the breeze. It's almost as if we've never fought. Words flow between us about safe topics – my knee, her sister, who Finnick might flirt with next. I watch as her face falls ever so slightly, the nausea no doubt kicking in, and try to keep up the banter. It's me talking at the end with Katniss keeping her mouth clenched shut.

It's when Katniss finally loses it nearly two hours after Prim and Haymitch left that I realize they left for a reason. Haymitch is keeping Prim away, possibly for her sake but mostly for Katniss's. She doesn't want Prim to see her like this. I don't really know what to do except grab the pink emesis basin and pull her braid off her shoulder. Without even realizing it, I climb into her bed, positioning myself behind her as she throws up, rubbing her back and letting her lean into me until she heaves forward once more. When she leans back, apparently done for a minute, she tells me to press the call button.

The nurse with the wheelchair from earlier looks less angry now. She smiles sadly and tells us she'll bring Katniss her second dose of Reglan, which I'm then told is an anti-nausea medication. By the time she comes back, Katniss is dry heaving and I feel completely helpless behind her.

The medication is delivered through Katniss's central line, which I stare at a few moments too long. It's a three-pronged port that she pulls out of her shirt and gets attached to the IVs. I've seen kids wandering around Children's with them before, but I've never been so close. Katniss notices my stare and shifts uncomfortably.

"Just another part of the freak show," Katniss mumbles, exhausted from the toll on her body.

She doesn't see herself the way I do. Whereas I see Katniss as an amazing girl, someone beautiful and inspiring, she sees nothing special. If anything, she doesn't understand herself. I know I shouldn't, but I can't help it. I lean forward and press my lips to her cheek. She stiffens in my arms instantly but remains with her back against my chest, lurching forward every so often. By the time all the medicine is circulating through her blood fifteen minutes later, she's nearly relaxed.

Prim bounces in just as Katniss begins getting restless. Haymitch raises his eyebrows at our position but wordlessly takes the emesis basin to the bathroom to clean up. I know Prim is sighing on the inside, seeing all the romance she desperately wants to see despite the situation. However, I know this isn't romantic. Eleven years ago, I wrote her letters. She's seen me through my rehab. It makes sense to be here, supporting and encouraging her just as like we've done for each other in the past. Platonically. Together this time as friends instead of strangers or acquaintances.

Of course we will go into this as one. We always do.

* * *

Once upon a time, my mother used to be a good parent, or so Rye tells me. When he was younger, she used to coddle him and hug him, all the normal motherly actions. It's no secret that my mother desperately wanted a daughter and, obviously, neither Leaven nor I fulfilled her ultimate wish. So, each additional son ended up being a burden to her and, I guess in punishment for getting a Y instead of an X from Dad, she expected more from Leaven and the most from me. Whereas Rye could kill someone and she'd probably help him bury the body, Leaven would have to bury it himself but if word got out she'd disown him. As for me, I could bury the body a million miles away and she'd still catch whiff of it and she'd personally escort me to the authorities while she was at it.

So, I am not in the least bit surprised when I pull up in front of the house and see her sitting in her lookout chair by the window, as if she's waiting for me to get home. In fact, I kind of expected it. The text from Hersh (_Mayday! Mama Mellark NOT happy. Run for your life!_) helped too. Our town is too small – and too gossipy – for my mother not to catch wind that I not only skipped school today but that I walked out of class. Not the respectable behavior everyone expects from the Mellark boys.

Now I just need to decide whether or not I should even walk in or if it will be more practical to spend the night in the back of the truck.

Sometimes avoiding my mother until she's mad at someone else has its benefits. However, in this case, there's really no one around that will get her upset enough to forget about me. Rye and Leaven are still at school and I don't think Dad can do anything more terrible than disrespecting my teacher, playing hooky, and leaving the town to make up a whole gaggle of stories about what I was possibly doing in my newfound free time.

The door of the truck sticks. I have to ram my shoulder against it to even get it to open.

The sun is just beginning to set and the sky has taken on my favorite hue, a dark yet vibrant orange, the type that seems to embrace everything it touches. I take a few moments to bask in it, hoping to draw some of its strength. I feel depleted of energy, which is certainly never good when my mother's in a mood. Before I open the door, I can hear my father in the kitchen. I haven't missed dinner, so at least I won't get yelled at for that.

The minute the door jiggles my mother gets up out of her chair so she can stand in the doorway, her hands on her hips, her mouth at the ready. I don't need to see it to know it's happening. When I get the door open, I'm not even through the threshold when her tirade begins.

"Where have you been?" she demands. Before I can open my mouth to tell her, she continues. "Walking out of class! I cannot believe you! Did I raise a Neanderthal? You do not just _walk out_ and disrespect your teachers! I have half the mind to send you off to military school!"

I open my mouth but I can see my father in the doorway. He slings a towel over his shoulder and shakes his head. The message is clear. He's already worked on her and I need to shut up or his hard work is going to go down the tubes.

"Do you have any idea what they're saying? They always warned me – _the last one's always the rebel_! But, no, I thought we'd raised you better! You respect your elders," she hisses. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes, ma'am," I say.

She throws her hands in the air in some big display of frustration. "Good lord, Peeta! Can't you use any common sense?" she exclaims. "I get home and there's a message on the machine from the school and your good-for-nothing father has no idea where you've gone off to! Even Delly and the Donner boy had no idea where you were."

Okay, so that's how Hersh knew. My mother sought them out for information. At least no one's been thoughtless enough to tell her about Katniss yet. She does not need to know. Oh, could you imagine? Peeta's somehow managed to befriend one of the cluster kids. She'd tell everyone at her book club so they could pity her as if she actually knows Katniss, probably tell the PTA about what a sweet girl she is, cry at church for a little for attention, and she'd insist that my college essay could be about it to boot. The last thing this town needs is my mother identifying with the cluster.

"Sorry," I mumble.

She rolls her eyes. "I've had your father make a pie for Mrs. Parkinson as an apology and to pay for it you're working all day Saturday. And that doesn't mean sitting at the counter doodling either!"

Oh goody. Now I have to take her shift. Of course that would be her punishment for me. I look over her shoulder to see my father shrug and I just smile. I don't want her to ground me, so I'll graciously accept this.

"Okay," I say.

She huffs in response before storming into the kitchen, the conversation over and with effective punishment. But, more importantly, it's over on her terms.

* * *

I tell my father I'm going to be late on Friday so I can visit Katniss after my rehab considering I can't see her Saturday because of that stupid shift that will require me to open and close the bakery. He nods his head.

"Oh, tutoring kids at the Y? Sounds good. I'll tell your mother they're serving you dinner."

Considering the Y is a good forty minutes away just outside the state capitol's city limits and no one in town ever goes there, it'll be safe bet to tell my mother that. This way, she can brag at her PTA meeting about how wonderful I am and no one will know it's a lie. The longer she doesn't know about Katniss the better and everyone knows that.

With gas prices soaring and a pickup from the dark ages, I'm surprised my mother hasn't yelled at me about my constant trips to the state capitol. Either she hasn't realized it's where I'm going or she doesn't care as long as I'm using my own money. Since I only make money for working at the bakery on weekends – my mother decided years ago that weekday shifts would be tacked onto our chore lists – and that's about three times less than minimum wage, I don't have a lot. But, it's worth every penny.

If anything, it's gotten old man Cray to like me.

"I'm surprised that old thing still runs!" Cray says when he sees me coming.

We have one gas station in Miner Falls and it's got a pump from the depression era. Cray sits sniveling in the tiny convenient store, which mostly sells cigarettes and packs of gum, and hates on just about everyone. The mine closing hit him hard, just like everyone else, because even though most of the miners lived in town there were a few that drove in from places like Old Orchard. The miners would stop by Cray's to fill their trucks, grab some smokes or chew, and then go on their merry ways. My brothers used to stop by to see which crude magazine Cray managed to get his hands on that week and he'd always be renting it out to some of the kids at the high school for a little extra cash. He's also got the only place in town that sells condoms, since the apothecary is dead set against it, and that draws a fair number of my classmates, although I'm not sure I'd trust anything that came out of Cray's. It's kind of a dump and, although everything in Miner Falls still has a thick layer of coal dust covering it even a decade after the mine shut down, this place can make your toes crawl right into your feet.

But, Cray seems to like me enough and while he yells at just about everyone else for wasting his time, knowing damn well that they still have to get their gas here since he's the last station for another ten miles, the only bad things that tend to come out of his mouth when he talks to me are about the wheezes my truck makes.

"Don't poke fun of my baby," I tell him, slapping the money down on the counter.

Before it was mine, the truck belonged to Leaven, before that Rye drove it around, and before that it was my father's. Since we have a delivery truck my father can use when he can't walk somewhere and a four-door my mother drives, the truck became the kids car and, like every other hand-me-down I've ever gotten, by the time it got to me it was sputtering with old age. But we don't travel far and I think I've doubled the mileage on it since meeting Katniss so it's still not even close to a hundred thousand. So, sputter it may, but it drives just fine.

Cray snorts but takes my money. "You drive a lot, Mellark," he says, trying to pry. "Unless you stop by just to see me."

It's meant as a joke, but I kind of feel bad for Cray. He's mean and cranky mostly, angry at the world because his brother inherited his father's huge farm when he died leaving Cray with just about nothing. Thread Farm has been a gold mine for Romy and Cray's kind of stuck. Not only that, but his wife left him years ago for a trucker and he doesn't have any kids or grandkids to keep him busy. I don't mind stopping by and listening to him every once and a while, but today I don't really have time for his chatter. I've got rehab with Finnick and I'm bordering on making it there on time as it is.

So, I just smile, hoping he'll take the hint. He does.

"Stinks about that knee of yours," Cray says while he rings me up. "Baseball team sucks without you."

Our baseball team was never anything special with me either but he doesn't say that.

"It's a rebuilding year," I tell him as we wait for the receipt to print. "Next year will be better."

Cray rolls his eyes. "Let's pray for that. Donner can pitch as well as he wants, but they ain't doing nothing without hitting," he says. And then he pulls up his magazine, giving me full view of a topless woman on the cover, and buries his face in the article he was looking at prior to my arrival. I take that as my cue to leave.

"See you later, Cray!"

He gives some sort of indistinguishable response and I'm out the door before he can say anything else.

The ride is boring. The radio stations all seem to have commercials going at the same time and so I listen to ads about the new laser tag place in the capitol and the reasons why I should go to Sonic for my next meal. I drive a good fourth of my journey before anything decent turns on and I'm speeding a little because I'm bored. There's really no one on the highway right now. It's usually dead aside from people going to and from work, but the closer I get to the capitol the less dead it becomes and I have to slow down. I hit a minor snag just before my exit, but I still make good time.

Finnick smiles when he sees me, but I notice it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

He starts me out doing stork stands, just because it makes him chuckle, and then we move into block workouts. Today, I'm to jump off the block and stick the landing. From across the room, Johanna shouts out to me that I should be a gymnast. She's mocking me because I'm so loud landing – when I do land on feet – I sound like an elephant. Once, when I actually stick one, Finnick lifts my hands in the air as if I've finished a routine at a gymnastics competition and tells Johanna I'm going to win gold. She snorts and rolls her eyes, but I think she's kind of having fun.

My time goes by quickly and soon I'm checking out, ready to sprint up the stairs to see Katniss. I sign my name on the slip and turn around to grab my things, surprised to see that Finnick has his bag over his shoulder as well and is standing by the door, almost as if he's waiting for me.

"You're going to see Katniss, right?" he asks. When I nod, he opens the door. "Come on, I'll walk with you."

We take the staff elevator, which seems quicker than the usual one I take, and we're silent most of the way. I'm not sure why Finnick is going up and I'm not entirely sure I want to ask. When we get to her room, I can see Haymitch talking to Dr. Heavensbee down the hallway along with a doctor I've never seen before. Prim is sitting on the floor outside and I sidle up next to her, copying her position so we're both sitting with our knees to our chests. I tell myself it's an additional part of my therapy and not because I'm avoiding following Finnick into Katniss's room.

Prim tugs at her volunteer shirt's collar before looking up at me. "It's Katniss's birthday tomorrow," she says.

How did I not know this? She must of said it sometime. Did I just not pay attention?

"She's still going to be here," Prim continues. "I was wondering if maybe you would help with it. She doesn't want us to do anything for her, but I don't think she could say no to you. I just want her to have a good day."

"Sure," I tell her. Now I have to figure out how I'm going to do this with my shift tomorrow. "What do you want me to do?"

Prim shrugs. "I don't know. Something special. I want her to have…just in case," she cuts off and shakes her head, letting out a breath before looking down the hallway in front of her. When she continues, it's so quiet I can barely hear her. "I just want her to have the perfect day."

My stomach flops. "What's going on, Prim?"

"She woke up this morning with numb feet," Prim says, looking at the rainbow floor tiles. "The neurologist thinks her chemo is causing something called peripheral neuropathy."

She jerks her head down the hallway to where Haymitch is standing. "They're trying to decide what to do now. She's almost through the treatment so they might just put her on a twenty-four hour drip or they might change it completely. Uncle Haymitch won't really tell me anything else."

I let out a breath. To be honest, when Haymitch told me I didn't understand the night Katniss was diagnosed with her relapse, I didn't believe him. I volunteer at Children's every Tuesday. I see things no one should ever see. Prim starts to shake beside me, her eyes filling with tears. She looks so much older than the nearly thirteen years that she has lived. This is a girl who has walked a war, worrying about stepping on landmines and causing her sister undue stress. She was barely eight when her parents died. She has not known a time when someone wasn't worrying about Katniss. Now, the sister that has always protected her from everything – so apparent in everything Katniss does – is breaking right in front of her eyes.

Prim shakes her head and lets out a breath. "It has to get worse before it gets better," she says, her voice suddenly loud.

"It's going to get better, Prim," I say, not entirely sure if I'm lying or not.

She gives me a watery smile. "I know," she says. Her eyes scan the hallway. "I trust Dr. Heavensbee. She's going to be okay."

We sit and wait for Finnick to exit in complete silence and it's in that moment that I realize something important. Katniss isn't the only soldier. We are all soldiers in the war Katniss will lead, each and every one of us. Our battles are different, but we all have the same purpose. We stay strong so that one day, no matter what, Katniss won't be alone.

It's when Finnick steps out, walking by us to speak with Haymitch and Dr. Heavensbee, and Prim rushes in, that I look down the hall to the nurses' station. Cinna sits in a chair looking through a chart, his body clothed in the same black scrubs I've seen him in before, the ones with the gold trim, his stethoscope wrapped around his neck. I take only a brief moment to think and then I do.

"Peeta!" he says, closing the chart and looking up at me. "What can I help you with?"

"I need advice," I say. Out of every doctor, nurse, child life specialist, anyone in this whole hospital including myself, Cinna knows Katniss the best. He understands her, where she's been, where she's going. He's been here since the beginning. He is her favorite nurse and, even though he's not supposed to play favorites, he clearly favors her. "If I were to do something special for Katniss's birthday with her still being here, what would you suggest I do?"

It is scientifically proven that it takes a third of a second to blink an eye. That is three to four hundred milliseconds. I'm sure if I timed it, it took Cinna even less to spread a smile on his lips, a gleam in his eye that tells me my question just might have made his shift.

* * *

It is decided that Katniss's treatment will be completed. Since her last dose was supposed to be tomorrow, they see no harm in moving forward with one more. Katniss will have a week break and then they will assess her, but her next round will be a different type of medication in hopes of not doing any more damage. They're hoping the neuropathy is a side effect, since it is known that one of her drugs can cause it, and that it will go away once she's put into remission. It could go away immediately, or it could take years. Or it could be permanent. When Haymitch and Dr. Heavensbee tell this to Katniss while Prim and I are in the room, I realize the significance of the term small victories.

I know that in order for Katniss to live, a part of her has to die. Even in a week, you can already see the effects. One of the drugs in her specific cancer-killing cocktail caused conjunctivitis and her eyes are still slightly pink and inflamed. Her appetite is gone, partially from the medications, partly because she's stubborn and doesn't want to puke up her lunch so she's not eating. Add in her chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathy, or as Dr. Heavensbee calls it CIPN, and the fact that medications are disrupting her sleep patterns to the crockpot of side effects. It leaves her cranky and restless.

And she has every right to be.

"You don't have to do this, you know."

I look up from the sketch I'm drawing to see Katniss staring at me. Prim was reluctantly dragged out of the room by Haymitch to go to dinner. I learned that they call it _Prim Time_ and Haymitch does it at least every few days, or more if Katniss insists. Tonight, Prim's night of attention brings them to some pancake house she's been dying to go to which features a play gym and children's arcade attached. I think there's even a nine-hole mini-golf course. It speaks volumes that surly Haymitch will even step foot inside.

_Prim Time_ is a great thing. For Prim, it's important. As for me, I'm not complaining. It means I get to spend time with Katniss with the only interruptions being the occasional nurse check.

"What don't I have to do?" I ask, setting the sketch down. Her eyes go briefly to see that I've drawn half of a bouquet of dandelions. "Keep you company? Yeah, you can't get rid of me that easily."

When I look up, I'm surprised by the look on her face. The corners of her mouth have dropped but not in the scowl to which I've become accustomed. Even through the pink, her gray eyes still captivate me. The whites of her eyes are bloodshot, so they stand out so much more. Beautiful isn't a strong enough word. I think my favorite color may change.

"I hurt you," she says.

Yeah, I suppose she did. But, it was my own fault for assuming. I should have asked if what we had going was verging on dating before I thought too much about it.

"We live in the present, Katniss. Not the past."

She nods and she's tired, so I tell her to sleep. Her eyes don't close immediately, but they do close. It's weird, in a way, that I'm completely comfortable with her, just sitting here and watching her sleep. I wonder if this is what love is, just wanting to be in the same room as the other person and knowing that the moment I leave I'll start to miss her, even though I know she's sleeping.

I'm sunk. Really, its like Katniss has tied an anchor to my foot and I'm falling to the depths of her ocean.

Her internal clock alarms her only minutes before Prim comes bouncing in, a crown on her head from the restaurant and a bag of goodies from her winnings. She waves a stuffed goat around as if she's five and sets it on Katniss's bedside table.

"I won Lady for you, Katniss," she whispers, kissing her sisters cheek and smiling.

"Thank you, Prim," she says. Her eyes start to flutter again and the rest of us exchange looks.

Feeling particularly daring tonight, I lean forward to kiss her forehead. She flinches slightly, but doesn't say anything to stop me. "I can't come tomorrow," I tell her. "I got to work all day, but I'll be back, okay?"

Katniss nods her head. She doesn't say anything.

I told Prim I would give her a ride to where she's staying earlier. She directs me on where to go through the dark capitol streets, telling me how she spent an hour trying to get enough tickets to win the goat.

"Katniss won me one once," Prim says. "It was at a carnival. So, when I saw it, I knew I had to get it for her. But, I don't think she remembered."

"I think she's just tired."

Prim shrugs and points to the next turn. "Maybe."

The house we stop in front of is not the beautiful Victorian that she lives in. The neighborhood isn't nearly as nice, the houses closer together, the street loud compared to the cricket-chirping perfectly manicured lane where I usually drop her off. The look on my face must show my concern, wondering if Haymitch has any idea of where his niece is staying, because Prim reaches over to pat my cheek.

"The Hawthornes are good people in a bad place," she says. "They understand. Trust me."

She thanks me for the ride and bounces, just as she always does, up the stoop. When the door opens, she's engulfed into the arms of a dark-haired woman before she's led into the house. I wait until the door is shut behind her and then, satisfied that she's safe inside, I make my way home.

* * *

I hate closing the bakery. It's not just flipping the sign at seven. Closing the bakery means cleaning every surface with disinfectant and sweeping all the crumbs. A good sweep is not enough. It has to be a _great_ sweep. The ovens have to be cleaned. Certain doughs have to be prepared so my father can put them in early the next morning. The money has to be counted, everything logged in the register. And, when it's only me closing, it takes forever. I'm lucky to leave at eight thirty.

Visiting hours are long over by the time I stride passed Octavia, one of the nurses, nearly an hour later. However, she just watches me and smiles, avoiding her eyes as if to pretend she hasn't seen me. Dr. Heavensbee stops me outside Katniss's room. He's the doctor on call tonight and is well aware of the plan Cinna and I created yesterday. He holds out a couple facemasks and shakes my hand.

"Remember, it starts at midnight," he says with a wink.

Then he sets the chart into the bin on the outside of Katniss's door and walks down the hallway as I enter her room.

Katniss looks up from her laptop, the sounds of _Friends_ echoing from the speakers. Her eyes widen. "Peeta?" she asks.

Without a word, I go into the closet and grab her sweatshirt, tossing it in her direction. "Put this on," I tell her, looking around. She's been detached from her IVs and other machines, just as Cinna said. She eyes me warily and I fight back a chuckle.

"I'm not kidnapping you," I tell her.

She shuts her laptop and looks at her coat. "Why do I need this?"

We don't have time for this. I walk toward her and take the fleece, sticking one of her arms in it before moving onto the other. "Do you trust me?" I ask. When she nods, I guide the zipper up to her chin. "Come on, then. I have something to show you."

Since she can't walk on her numb feet, there's only one way to get her out of the room and I'm not sure she's going to like it. I do it anyway. As quickly as I can I take her in my arms, bridal style I note, and she squeals. Her arms flail and latch around my neck, trying to keep herself from falling.

"Peeta, what are you doing?" she demands.

I fight the gasp that wants to escape from having her this close to me, in my arms. I feel like Superman. I can protect her from anything, if only I could stay in this position for the rest of my life.

"I thought you said you trusted me?" I joke. She scowls and I chuckle, telling her to be quiet. Octavia lets her eyes fall to the counter. Dr. Heavensbee doesn't turn from facing a chart. No one bothers us as I walk Katniss to the stairwell. I'm thankful now that my family is a family of bakers. Years of lifting heavy bags of flour make Katniss seem like air in my arms. I bet she's barely a hundred pounds soaking wet and she's just getting lighter each day she's here.

The roof of the hospital is where the nurses and doctors take time to go outside, or so Cinna says. There is a landing pad for the helicopters but the other side is empty. It had been set up just as Cinna said it would be – a blanket on the ground with a few pillows, an extra blanket to wrap Katniss in, nothing too romantic but cozy, almost homey. I walk to the blanket and settle her down on some of the pillows so she doesn't get uncomfortable. Then I take the masks out of my pocket, fixing one over my own face before handing it to her.

"What are you doing?" she asks. She knows I don't need a mask. I'm not immunosuppressed. She doesn't realize, or maybe she does, that I'm doing this for her, to show her that we're in this together.

I reach forward and put the mask on her face for her since she's not doing it herself. "Well, what you do, I do," I tell her.

Talking with masks on isn't the easiest thing, especially with the loud hum of the city streets, partying up on a Saturday night, so Katniss and I sit in our silence. Outside our niche on the roof, the world continues to turn. People live their lives as they always have – work, family, material objects. We live for these three things in our present society, not necessarily in that order. If I've learned anything from spending time at PCH, not just with Katniss but with my volunteering, it's that we live for the wrong things. We should live for days. The moments we want to be swallowed up whole in.

Don't ask me how but as we near midnight I find myself in one of these moments. Katniss is curled up in the flannel blanket, wrapped up in my arms, her head on my chest as she fights fatigue in my lap. I would give anything to be swallowed now and spend every moment of the rest of my life with Katniss, not speaking and just being, our eyes trained on stars that float in the night sky.

"What are you thinking?" she asks. It's quiet and through the mask I can barely hear it, but the city's hums have softened and, aside from the occasional ambulance roaring to life, the night favors us.

It's a risk, but I answer her truthfully.

"I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever."

She's quiet for a minute and I begin to wonder if she didn't hear me. However, when I go to say it again, she turns to me and I can see, even through the mask, that she's smiling. She gives a single nod of her head and then buries herself into my chest.

Midnight comes all too quickly. I lift Katniss into my arms, still wrapped securely in her blanket, and walk down the staircase. Dr. Heavensbee waits at the door, a wheelchair at the ready, and I gently place her into it. We walk together and get her situated into her room again, reattaching the heart rate monitor and turning it back on. Haymitch is waiting when we arrive, a smile on his face when he sees Katniss's smile.

"Happy Birthday, Katniss," I tell her. She smiles a little more and closes her eyes.

When I leave a moment later, all the nurses are leaving one of the empty rooms, wheeling out machines and a teaching dummy. Octavia opens the door to the stairwell and has her arms full of pillows and the blanket we sat on. Johanna once said that Katniss has this whole building wired to her beck and call. The fact that these people broke hospital policy, faking a code so we could slip back in, just to give this one spectacular girl a good day is proof of that.

* * *

Rue and I sit at the coloring table. Prim took the day off and is helping Haymitch with Katniss at their home. After being released on Sunday, she's been at home in her own bed. Dr. Heavensbee gave her an additional week before starting her next round in order to give her body, and the CIPN, a break. It is now a waiting game. With her immune system completely suppressed, we are waiting on a possible infection to strike. I took her outside for the last time. She is no longer allowed out, her body too weak. I know now that her birthday gift was not just a good moment for her; it was her last semblance of freedom.

My phone vibrates on the table where I have set it between me and Rue. Earlier, Prim sent me a text saying Katniss had come down with a fever. She had stayed home from school and had told me she would keep me updated. No news was good news, but I spent the rest of the school day checking my phone.

I click the text message bubble. _ER_ is all Prim has written.

My stomach does about five flops. Rue sighs beside me and tries to bury herself in helping the kids. I try but I can't focus. My hands are shaking. I can't get a single line right. I had been attempting to draw a picture of me and Katniss from her birthday, entertaining two little girls who were so enthralled by my work they had begun catching flies in their mouths without notice.

As soon as my shift is over, I make my way to the ER. I have never been in it before, at least consciously. When I messed up my knee I'm sure they brought me here first but I didn't wake up until I was in my room. Either that or I don't remember. Just like every other section of the hospital, the tile floors are rainbow and the walls are decorated with giant animals. Prim, with her long blond braids, sits alone in the waiting room, her hands wringing together. Whereas I pause, Rue walks right out from behind me, wrapping her arms around her friend. I fall into the seat on her other side.

"She started hallucinating," Prim says. Her eyes are focused on the ground. "It got so high so fast. She kept saying my name over and over, like she couldn't find me."

Rue continues to hold her tightly, but Prim reaches out to grab my hand. She gives it a squeeze. "She said your name too. She kept muttering, asking where you were," she tells me. I try to swallow the lump in my throat and fight the urge to run to her. The look on her face tells me Prim is doing the same.

Instead, we sit. We wait. Because that's really all we can do.

* * *

_Thanks to everyone who reviewed Part I! For all the anonymous reviewers, I look at yours as well. Thank you. To _Of Pearls and Paints_: since you've disabled PMs, I just wanted to give a shout out to you. Your review made me smile and I was so glad to see that you liked this._

_Sorry this took so long to get up. I really wanted to get it right. Like Peeta, I have been dutifully researching in order to make sure this seems believable. As always, the lines you recognize from the trilogy do not belong to me. I think there are about seven or eight. I hope everyone enjoyed Part II. I hope to get Part III up by next week._

_Let me know what you think!_

_PS. If anyone out there is really good at making banners or covers and would like to make one for this story or my other ones, I realized I'm not very good at it when I made one for _What's A Soulmate?


	3. Part III

_Before going onto the third and final part, I just want to give a huge shout out to everyone who reviewed Part II. I like to PM everyone who reviews (like a thank you card) but I thought you would all rather the update today rather than me sitting down and PMing. Just know that I read each and every one of your reviews and this is what pushed me to get this out and perfect. I struggled with it, getting it just right for you, and rewrote several parts multiple times, which is why it's so late. I hope you enjoy it._

_So, this is dedicated to you. All of you._

* * *

Part III

_I'm not afraid of tomorrow,_

_Tomorrow, I'm afraid, will change._

_And if we're consumed by counting each hour,_

_What's left of today?_

-Camera Can't Lie, _Last Dance_

I went to my first funeral when I was seven. Or, I should say, it's the first one I really remember attending. All four of my grandparents died before my tenth birthday, so I'm sure I went to my fair share. This funeral, however, was different. The entire town showed up to the church and it was so packed people were standing against the walls listening to the funeral sermon. At seven, I wasn't really paying attention all that much. My mother chided me a good five times about not slouching in my seat in the pew.

I kept wondering whether the whole town would show up to my funeral, or if this was one of the perks of being the mayor's daughter. Everyone cries for you when you die, even if they didn't really know you.

Madge Undersee's death was the closest I ever got to the cluster before I met Katniss. She was Hersh's cousin, for one, her mother being his father's sister. Her mother had also been one of my father's friends when they were in school. But I didn't know her all that well. She got sick right around the time I stopped writing my letters to Katniss and, like Katniss, she never really came back.

The thing that scared everyone about Madge was that she lived about as far away from the mine as anyone. She wasn't a miner's kid, like Katniss and so many of the others that were diagnosed. She was the _mayor's_ daughter and, if the mayor's daughter could die from this, it was lethal to everyone. No longer were the lines drawn between those who lived close to the mine and those who didn't.

But, at the time, the only thing that really affected me was how little her casket was and how her mother had to be escorted out of the building by her sister, Maysilee, and Hersh's father, Bon. I vaguely remember seeing Haymitch Abernathy lingering in the back of the church, trying not to be noticed.

Coincidence or not, the very next day the state declared that chemicals that started coming out of the mine after a recent accident was the probable cause of the cluster. The Department of Health and Human Services mandated that the mine, which had been closed for almost two years, be collapsed.

That reaping, sixteen kids were diagnosed and that didn't include the twenty that had shown symptoms prior and were already being treated. I attended four more funerals between Madge's and the reaping, none of which, I noted, were for the girl I had written letters.

* * *

It takes six hours, but eventually Haymitch comes out into the waiting room. It's a little after eleven and Prim, who had spent most of the previous night awake and worrying about Katniss, lost a battle with her eyelids. I got us both dinner from the cafeteria upstairs after Rue left and watched as she ate. But that was hours ago and around ten she started to doze, only to spring awake every few minutes. It didn't take long for her to unconsciously surrender and once I was sure she was out, I picked her up and laid her down on one of the benches. God only knows what kind of germs she's picking up, but at least she won't wake up with a stiff neck. Haymitch's eyes go to her instantly, taking in her tiny sleeping form, most of her body curled up under my unzipped fleece jacket I turned into a makeshift blanket.

I stand and meet him halfway. "How is she?"

"She's alright," Haymitch says, running a hand over his face. "They got the fever down and the shakes to stop, but they're going to keep her overnight."

He looks back to Prim and his eyes glaze over in that look my father gets when he's trying to figure out what to do. I wish I didn't know the hospital's policies as well as I've come to learn them. Normally, if Katniss had been moved to a private room, it wouldn't be a problem for Haymitch to grab Prim and stick her on one of the cots the hospital keeps. If he's worrying about her, it means Katniss is being housed in an area where the number of visitors, or those underage, are restricted – the two coming to mind being the ER cubicles and the Intensive Care Unit.

Haymitch pulls his cellphone out of his pocket and I know he's probably calling Mrs. Hawthorne. I know he feels bad – I've heard him talking about it on the phone with her before – about dumping Prim with her more often than not. So, without thinking, I offer up my services to play Prim's babysitter for the night.

"I'll watch her." Haymitch raises his eyebrow at me, so I continue. "It's fine. Being in her own bed tonight might make her feel better."

"Don't your parents care that you're never home?" he demands brusquely. It's not exactly concern seeping through his voice, but more like curiosity disguised under layers of exhaustion.

I shrug. "Not really," I say. It's true. As long as my dad knows where I am it's not really a problem for him – he trusts my judgment – and as long as I'm not doing anything stupid the neighbors can gossip about my mother couldn't care less. "I'm the youngest of three boys. They've seen worse. And, besides, my dad already knows I'd skip school to come back up here so I might as well stay. Saves gas."

He shakes his head but puts his phone back in his pocket. "Whoever said chivalry was dead," he mutters under his breath. "Alright, you take her home. I want her going to school tomorrow so don't let her talk you out of it. I'll call if plans change."

As he turns away from me, I swear he's muttering about white knights and damsels in distress.

I decide to let Prim sleep as long as she can, so I don't wake her. At least tonight she's been a heavy sleeper through two ambulance deliveries and a pair of parents huddled together practically yelling at each other. She doesn't wake up as I lift her in my arms and the woman at the desk offers to help me get her in the truck. Once I get her situated, I drive carefully to avoid any potholes. She sleeps like a baby until I have to slam the truck door shut with my foot and then she blinks.

"Peeta?" she asks groggily.

Now that we're at her house, I'm glad she's awake, even if it's only slightly. There's no way I could've gotten the door open with her in my arms. I have her hold the key and giggle the doorknob.

Her room, I notice, is completely unlike Katniss's. Her walls are a soft lavender and she has a floor rug with swirls of blue and green covering the hardwood. Her shelves are full and she has pictures all over the place. She's just as neat as her sister, but her room is full. It's the room I would expect to belong to a girl with Haymitch Abernathy as her guardian. I set her down in the bed, removing her shoes as she tries to fight the losing battle of her exhaustion again.

"Katniss?" she asks.

"She's fine," I tell her, sitting on the edge of her bed. "They're keeping her overnight, but she's fine. Haymitch wants you to go to school tomorrow, so you better get back to sleep."

Halfway through her nod, she's already out again and it makes me chuckle. "Goodnight, Prim," I whisper, pulling the sheets up over her and standing to turn out the lights.

I don't really know what to do with myself now. I called home before I left with Prim and, just as I thought, my father said nothing to change my mind. So, it's not like I have to worry about that. My mind goes back to Katniss, imagining her hooked up to IVs and sleeping in a hospital bed. I walk into her room.

Her bed isn't made, showing the rush of their departure earlier in the day. I can imagine there is probably sweat interlaced in the sheets, remnants of her fever and infection that will have to be washed away. Everything else in her room is just as it always is. Her laptop is closed on her desk. Her shelves are practically bare, the scrapbook on the top, the picture I drew her in a frame right next to it. I have only been in Katniss's room once without her, back when she sprained her ankle, but it feels different this time. Last time I was invading her privacy by looking at the scrapbook that Prim hurriedly put away. This time, I still feel like I'm invading, but it's more because the whole place seems sacred.

Before tonight, Katniss had just been sick. There had never been an active moment in time that I was terrified tonight was the night I'd lose her. I don't know if there even was a chance she could've died tonight, or if I'm just being dramatic, but this is the first time I've ever worried about not seeing her in the morning.

It makes my heart race as I shut her door and make my way downstairs. I collapse on the couch, set the alarm on my phone to wake Prim before seven, and try to sleep. It doesn't work. When the alarm blares at six fifty, I don't think I've slept a wink. Instead, I'm in the same position on the couch, looking at a picture of Katniss and Prim when they were younger, framed and hung on the wall with pride. Both of them are happy. Both are smiling. Both are healthy and I think that's my favorite part of all.

* * *

I wake Prim up at seven since I'm not entirely sure what time frame we're working with to get her to school on time. When she moves around upstairs, I attempt to make her something for breakfast with the food they have in the house. It takes me a few minutes to figure out where everything is, but once I've found a griddle that looks like it hasn't been used in years, I grab supplies from their fridge.

It's not exactly what I expected. It has just enough food inside to make it two, maybe three, days for their family and everything inside is fresh or labeled as organic – a diet for a family with a sick child. Haymitch must make at least three trips to the store a week. I quit gawking and grab the eggs.

It takes me five minutes after I've plated her breakfast to realize that she should be down by now. I've never lived with an almost-teenage girl, but I know that it doesn't take Prim that long to put on clothes and brush her teeth and whatever other daily ritual she does.

It takes me five seconds once I hear her tiny voice in the hallway to figure out what she's doing.

"Please!" she whines into the phone. It's one of those hanging wall-mounted phones that I haven't seen in years. Even in Miner Falls, where we have the (unofficial) oldest gas pump in the country, we have cordless. She twirls the cord around her finger. She pouts. "Fine."

She hangs up and turns to me. "Uncle Haymitch won't let me miss school again," she says. I take her shoulder and lead her into the kitchen, aware that it's seven thirty and her school must be starting soon. "You'll tell Katniss I'll come see her as soon as school gets out?"

"Of course."

"Good," she says. We eat in silence aside from her quiet _thank you_.

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting her school to be like, but it wasn't correct. Prim directs me through traffic and we pull down a long – _gated_ – drive ten minutes before her bell rings. The cars parked ahead of us are all expensive and new. The girls step out wearing huge handbags over their shoulders, the boys all follow them. In my beat up Ford, Prim and I are slightly out of place and by slightly I mean very.

"Sorry about the ride," I mutter, rubbing the back of my neck. I've never really been embarrassed of my truck before but when I see a woman wearing a very professional pantsuit as she walks her elementary-aged daughter in her fancy pressed uniform into the school, I feel out of place.

Prim giggles. "Don't be," she insists. "My friends are going to be _so_ jealous."

I stare at her. How is the girl that just stepped out of a Mercedes going to be jealous of this?

She giggles again and reaches forward to pat my cheek. Her smile is genuine, so I'm glad about that. Her bummed mood about having to go to school instead of visit Katniss has seemingly dissipated.

"I'm getting dropped off at school by a handsome boy," she says with a smirk. My face heats up instantly and I know my pale skin has turned fire engine red. She giggles even more before opening the door and skipping out, thanking me for the ride as she runs to her friends. They all stand in the courtyard, matching khaki skirts and knee socks and sweaters and braids, and they crane their necks to see me inside. Prim points and the girls all stare at her wide-eyed, as if I'm some famous celebrity and not the boy that (sometimes) makes her sister smile.

I try not to hit any of the cars on my way out and feel much more comfortable on the main stretch of capitol roads. Once I hit the familiar routes that will lead me to Children's Hospital Drive, I feel like I can finally breathe. I wonder if Haymitch feels that way dropping her off, or if he just doesn't give a shit about what other people think. I'm inclined to believe the latter.

PCH is the hub of all things medical in the state capitol. There's another hospital, a medical school, a pharmaceutical company, and more that I'm probably missing or don't know about located on the campus. Children's has its own drive and a man that stands at the gates to direct traffic to either the parking lot or the garage. He's gotten to know me fairly well these passed few months so we exchange pleasantries before I'm sent on my way. I'm eager to see that Prim's school is barely a five-minute drive from the hospital and city center. It means I get to see Katniss for longer. I sniff my clothes to make sure I don't smell, considering I'm in the same clothes I wore yesterday and slept in, before rushing through the building. Effie tells me where to find her, blatantly eyeing my clothes, and I go right up.

My heart starts beating rapidly in my chest when I see a small group standing outside Katniss's door.

Dr. Heavensbee and Haymitch I recognize. I don't recognize the woman or the other man, but they're both doctors. I can tell from their white coats. There's another woman I know vaguely, but I can't remember her name. She's one of the child life specialists that work with Dr. Heavensbee's patients and I've seen her with Katniss before. I think her name begins with a C.

"Ah, Peeta, the man of the hour!" Dr. Heavensbee says when he sees me.

I'm introduced to the group of people by Katniss's oncologist. Dr. Paylor is the neurologist that is watching Katniss's neuropathy. She will be crucial when Dr. Heavensbee begins her on her second round of chemo. She looks young, maybe in her early thirties, but she stands with confidence, as anyone who's graduated from medical school should. The other woman, who shakes my hand and tells me it's good to see me again, is named Cressida. She shaved her head bald so the kids she worked with wouldn't feel so abnormal when they lost their hair. That always stood out to me.

The man that addresses me specifically concerning their little meeting is Dr. Aurelius, Katniss's psychologist.

"Yes, Peeta, I'll be very interested to see her reaction to you," he says.

I must look really confused because Haymitch sighs and jerks his head in the direction of the door. "The hallucinations she had freaked her out, kid," he says. "She's had nightmares for years, so for her to go through that was fairly traumatic."

"Why will it be interesting to see me?" I ask.

"She's been worried all morning that you and Prim are dead," he tells me. "That's why Prim's at school. We didn't want to overload her."

Suddenly, I lose every lesson my parents ever taught me about etiquette and manners as I turn around and open the door. I've been worrying all night about Katniss while she's been paranoid about me and Prim. I can kill two birds with one stone by walking in – we can stop worrying about each other.

She's lying in her bed having a staring contest with Cinna. He's in his street clothes, so I imagine that it's his day off and he came just for her. Neither notices me at first. I'm not even sure Katniss can see me. The way her room is situated, her back is to the door and she's facing Cinna. She begins to shake and Cinna rests a hand on her shoulder.

"They are both perfectly fine," he says. His eyes flicker over her shoulder and he nods in my direction. "Turn around, Katniss."

She rolls over amidst the wires. When she makes eye contact with me, her eyes widen, her pupils dilate almost in fear, but then they relax almost instantaneously. "Peeta?" she says, her voice quivering.

I'm at her side quicker than I ever though possible.

"Where's Prim?" she asks, her heart rate monitor starting to speed up beside me. I take her hand and she squeezes as tightly as she can, but I notice it's half of what she usually can.

"She's at school," I tell her. Instinctively I reach to run a hand through her hair. It's meant to comfort her, and me, but it seems to have mixed effects. Katniss relishes it, clearly enjoying the touch because it means I'm alive. My stomach boils and I feel like I'm going to puke when I withdraw my hand and along with it comes some of her hair.

Cinna sees my falter and directs Katniss's attention to him. "See, I told you."

She turns away from him and back to me, so I'm forced to swallow my emotions. I can't be weak. I have to be strong. Inside I'm drowning, but if I'm going to be Katniss's lifesaver, I've got to learn how to swim.

"I couldn't reach you," she says. "I kept running toward your voice and screaming your name, but you never got any closer. And then the beach exploded and –"

"Shh," I cut her off. "It wasn't real."

"But it seemed real," she whispers.

We sit there for a while. Katniss stares at me, as if she doesn't believe I'm not going to disappear in some massive explosion right in front of her eyes. Her hand clenches tightly onto mine, the physical contact all she trusts. All of the times before when I thought I understood what Haymitch was saying when he told me that things would get messy seem like nothing. Compared to this moment, I have been making cookies. Now, I'm icing a ten-tiered wedding cake with intricate flowers and vine details. It tears me apart limb by limb, like a rabid dog attacking me, to see her so terrified. For the briefest of moments, I wonder if this is what it will feel like to watch her die.

* * *

Katniss doesn't let go of my hand until Prim comes to the hospital after school. By this point, she has told me bits and pieces of her hallucinations – how she was stuck in a forest running to me, yelling for me, and she couldn't run fast enough. I was on a beach and she told me she could feel the sand in her toes, it was that involved. In her ear she could hear Prim screaming, as if she was being murdered. The imagery with which she repeats it makes me shudder myself, only able to imagine what it could possibly be like to be stuck in her nightmare, believing everything she was seeing was real.

It is after Katniss lets go of me to engulf Prim in her arms that Haymitch pulls me aside.

"She got lost in the woods once," he says as he takes me for a walk down the hallway. "That's where she's getting the forest. Her father and I took her hunting with us during her first remission. We were teaching her how to use a bow and, when her father shot a deer, she bolted. She was about eight or nine maybe, Bambi-phase, and it took us hours to find her."

"But you found her, obviously."

He shrugs. "It was stupid taking her, really. She'd just lost a bunch of her friends but she begged and all her father wanted to do was make her happy."

I can fully emphasize with Haymitch and Mr. Everdeen wanting to do nothing but make her happy. I grapple with the same feelings.

"Is that when her nightmares started?" I ask.

"Yes and no," he says. "Of course she was scared out of her mind about getting lost. We didn't find her until after dark. She'd climbed up some tree. But, no, they really started when her parents died. She blames herself."

"She told me," I whisper, remembering our last conversation before Katniss's relapse which included so much yelling and so many tears. I wish I could take everything back.

Haymitch seems surprised by this. He eyes me, as if seeing something for the first time, and then shakes his head. "It wasn't," he insists. "Their mother was a loony tune. Hunter was a good man though. Wouldn't accept any help and had to do everything himself to provide. He thought those girls hung the moon in the sky."

He lets out a breath, staring off into some distant memory. I never really thought about how hard this must be for Haymitch. Katniss's parents were his and Maysilee's best friends. He'd lost his wife, his best friend, and then Mrs. Everdeen killed herself, leaving him with Katniss teetering on the brink of death and an eight-year-old Prim who was probably terrified of everything happening around her. I try to imagine myself in a situation like that, where Hersh or Delly died and left me with two kids to raise, one healthy, one not. In some ways, he must see Katniss's survival as a way to stay close to his friends and her death as a failure.

"So, what's the plan?" I ask. My voice is hoarse, my throat too dry and scratchy.

"She's going to start another round of chemo next Friday. That'll be three weeks from her last round," he says. "Hopefully, it will put her into remission. More than likely it won't, so we're already planning ahead. But she's staying here until she starts up again. We don't need her getting another infection."

_More than likely it won't._

The phrase repeats in my head. More than likely it_ won't._ Won't. What does that mean? Why are they doing it if it won't help? Or is it helping and it's just a stopgap measure? I swallow the lump in my throat.

My voice is shaky. "And if it doesn't put her in remission?"

He turns to me and places a hand on my shoulder. "We cross that bridge when we come to it."

* * *

My mother distinctly ignores me upon my arrival home that evening. My father questions me briefly about Katniss and then tells me to give my mother space. I don't ask why. I don't particularly care. Instead I lock myself in my room, but my night does not consist of sleep. I toss and turn, my mind plagued with my own set of terrifying nightmares.

I dream about losing Katniss.

For the next few days, my hours go by in blurs. I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I think of the crippling fear that engulfed my body when Prim told me Katniss was hallucinating from her fever. My subconscious decides to punish me with false realities. In the beginning we are always fine. Katniss looks just as healthy as she did when we first met but then everything spirals down into darkness. Like Katniss's hallucination, she calls my name but I can't reach her. I sprint as fast as I can, pushing my knee to its ultimate limit, but she always stays an inch beyond my fingertips. Sometimes she starts bleeding out of every pour in her body – blood rushing from her nose, her eyes, her mouth. Other times she gets blown to smithereens in an explosion like the one she told me about.

But, the one that scares me the most is when I actually do reach her. Her skin burns with fever and I run her to the hospital. The doctors shout that her fever is too high. I watch as Cinna and Octavia pour ice on her shaking body, only to see her burst into flames moments later, her body so warm with blistering fever she becomes a fire herself.

In order to get my mind off of it, I draw my nightmares. I'm just finishing my latest one, Katniss Everdeen the girl on fire, when the bells rings, signaling lunch. I run a hand over my face.

"You look like you got hit in the face with a two-by-four."

I look up to see Hersh step in front of my desk. We don't sit near each other in this class, given that's its alphabetical by last name. I don't mind. It means I have the last seat in my row and I can draw my nightmares without having people watching me. Our math teacher doesn't talk all too much anyway, and our class consists of a set of problems we have to finish or they're homework, so I haven't been paying attention. My head pounds with exhaustion and I just want to go see Katniss, make sure she hasn't really become the girl on fire.

He reaches forward and touches the bags I know are under my eyes before I swat his hand away. We're alone in the room, everyone having gone, and Delly is standing in the doorway staring with concern.

"I'm fine," I tell him, shutting the cover of my sketchbook before he can see.

Hersh groans. "Fine, but maybe the nurse can give you something to help you sleep," he says. And then he turns around and walks out the door passed Delly.

She waits for me and I just give her a shake of my head. I can't deal with a lecture right now. Not with Hersh acting like he did and my mind worrying about Katniss. I'm pleasantly surprised by her silence, something Delly rarely gives me, but once we reach our lockers, she opens her mouth.

"He's worried about you, you know," she says.

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, sure." I throw the books I don't need back in the locker.

"He is," Delly insists. "He's scared about what's going to happen to you."

I look up at her from my position kneeling on the ground. She's leaning against the lockers, her face tinged with worry. I want to ask what she thinks is happening to me, but I figure she'll tell me soon enough. We stare for a moment before she leans down and sits on the tile beside me.

"Look," she says. "I understand that this is hard, but you're withdrawing from the world. And, no offense, but you look terrible. You do know that we're here for you, right? If you need to talk."

How can I talk to them about Katniss when neither of them knows what I'm going through? Delly, like myself, has been fairly unaffected by the cluster. And, aside from his cousin when we were in elementary school, Hersh's family has been fine. A little dysfunctional and mostly distant, but fine. Then, I know instantly what they're getting at. Hersh doesn't want me to become his aunt, who just about went crazy when she lost her daughter. Now she's stuck in bed. But, I'm not going to lose Katniss.

"I'm fine," I tell her. "Really. Katniss is going to be fine and so am I."

Delly stares at me and I know she doesn't believe a word of what I just said.

* * *

The night before Katniss starts her second round, we sit in her bed together watching a movie on her laptop. Prim and Haymitch are out doing some _Prim Time_ at a bowling alley with a few of Prim's little friends. Katniss turns me.

"It's Prim's birthday on Saturday," she says. "I want to do something for her, but I can't. It's just so frustrating."

Knowing Prim, she's not going to care about her birthday. Her mind has been focused on Katniss much like mine. "I'm sure she won't mind," I tell her. "She just wants you better."

Katniss groans. "I know. I just…I hate it. This is supposed to be her special day. She shouldn't have to worry about me."

I learn all about the argument that happened the previous night. Since Katniss will be receiving treatment on Prim's birthday, the little girl told Haymitch that she didn't want a birthday party or presents. Katniss all but flipped out on her, insisting that Prim not suffer because she was sick.

"And then she says, _but, Katniss, the only thing I want is for you to get better_," she says, imitating Prim's voice fairly well. "Why can't she just be a normal thirteen-year-old? She's an old soul and it's all my fault."

She leans her head on my shoulder and instinctively I reach for her hand. No longer do I wonder what this means. I know it's a coping strategy for both of us. Keep the other near to ensure this is reality and our nightmares are not. Katniss will not spontaneously combust in a burst of fiery terror. I won't explode on a beach. I turn my head slightly and kiss her bare scalp. Her hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving bald spots and strands here or there until she got frustrated and shaved it off completely. It had surprised me how much easier it was to see her without any hair than it was to watch it fall out.

She hates it, everything about losing her hair. For someone who never seemed to care about clothes and appearances, it had caught me slightly off-guard the night she told me I didn't have to stay because she was ugly. I told her she was beautiful. She scoffed and told me to leave, but I just sat in my seat and we remained in silence for twenty minutes before Prim bounced back in.

Prim was the one who told me that it isn't about vanity. It's about control. For Katniss, she could always control her hair. Whereas clothes only covered so much – shirts that were too tight highlighted her central line or short sleeves didn't cover the radiation scars on her arms – and lost their correct fit after medications made her bloated or a skeleton, she could do whatever she wanted to her hair. When she was healthy, she could cut it or braid it or leave it down. When she's sick, her hair falls out, and she loses the little control she has on her own body, nearly paralleling the loss of control over her life.

The first time I kissed her head she hated it. Now she doesn't say anything, so I'm not sure if she likes it or if she's just picking her battles.

I don't pay attention to the movie. Occasionally, when I hear a quiet chuckle or feel her shake her head against my shoulder, I get pulled out of my trance. The gears in my head are working feverishly in planning. Katniss may not be able to do anything for Prim, but I can. And maybe, for Katniss, that could be enough.

"How about this?" I ask. She looks up and away from the screen. "I take Prim on Saturday to do something she loves. Let her relax. Next year, you join us. Deal?"

Katniss's face contorts and I know if she hadn't lost them she'd be raising her eyebrows at me. "You don't have to do that," she says.

"I want to," I insist.

She thinks about it for a minute and then sighs. "Okay, but this is the first and last time you plan Prim's birthday. Next year, it's back to me."

I let a smile fill my lips as my deal gets morphed into her terms. "Deal."

* * *

"So, what do you want to see?"

Prim turns away from the window to smile at me. The radio is set to her favorite station. She's got Katniss's old aviators on her face and she's in a sundress I've seen her in way too many times for it not to be her favorite piece of clothing. Before we left the hospital, Katniss tried to do her hair but her fingers aren't as agile as they used to be. Given her CIPN, which is affecting the nerves in her hands as well as her feet, on bad days she can barely move her fingers. On the worst days she has shooting pain instead of numbness. Prim told her not to do an intricate braid and just do a single one, but I saw that it affected Katniss more than Prim.

Sitting in her seat next to me, kicking the heels of her sandals together like Dorothy and her ruby slippers, she looks like a little fair-haired Katniss when she was healthy. Well, a little fair-haired Katniss in a dress.

"Anywhere and everywhere!" she shrieks, looking out the window as we pass by the sign telling us our exit is soon. She lists off a bunch of stuff she'd like to do and then she looks up at me sheepishly. "Maybe we could go to your family's bakery?"

I smile as I veer into the exit ramp. We've got a good ten-minute stretch of country road ahead of us. I had already been planning on dropping by the bakery the minute Prim said she wanted to go to Miner Falls for her birthday. I figured we'd go there last, grab her something she wanted, and then head back to the capitol. However, Katniss pulled me back and pressed her lips to my ear.

"She loves all that baking stuff," she whispered, her eyes focused on Prim walking to the door and attempting to make her whispered message not seem as though it was for Prim's benefit. "Let her pick something out. Haymitch will pay you back."

I have a better idea in mind.

"This is so cool," Prim whispers, her eyes trained on the long stretches of land that border the roads. "Are those horses? Wow."

A chuckle makes my chest shake. I have to remember that Prim has never been here. When I took Katniss it had been a snowy early February day. She had stared out the window in a mesmerized trance, seeing everything she once remembered. Not much has changed since we were five. Prim, who was just a year old when the Everdeens left town, has never been here. She doesn't remember. And she still feels like this is her home more than the place she grew up.

I drive passed Cray's and the volunteer fire department before turning down the road that leads to the town center. It's got a big green state sign, an arrow that points down the road and the town name written across it as if we didn't know. I always roll my eyes, but Prim starts bouncing in her seat as I begin pointing things out to her.

"That's the elementary school," I point out. We drive a little further. "Community center. Town hall."

"Where's your bakery?" she asks.

I chuckle. "Right up here on the main stretch. We're going to park and walk."

It's a warm Saturday in late May, which means most of the townspeople are out walking around. Mrs. Donner is outside the candy shop Hersh's family owns passing out little candies to some of the kids. Mr. Undersee is out on his usual walk, talking to everyone. He sends me a wave and I stick my hand out the window in return. Prim follows my lead and we both laugh. I pull my truck into the church parking lot so we can walk the whole street.

The thing with Prim is that I've never met anyone who could hate her. She charms everyone and by the time we get to the general store she's already got a bouquet of flowers from the florist, a bag of candy from Mr. Donner, a heart locket from the jeweler, and all I can do is roll my eyes. I try to pay for all of it, but they insist it's a birthday present for Prim, despite only having met her today, and instead I tell everyone I'll send a loaf of bread in trade.

The bell jingles when we walk in the bakery and my father shouts out that he'll be there in a minute. My mother's at some church meeting or something which makes everything all the better. We don't need her raining on Prim's parade. When my father walks out, wiping dough on his apron, he smiles.

"This must be little Primrose," he says. He turns to me. "She's not as little as you said. I was expecting a toddler, not a beautiful young lady."

Prim shuffles her feet as her cheeks heat up. I roll my eyes at my father but he just laughs and tells her to hop on out back with him. Prim jumps at the chance, her eyes scanning the display cases as she goes. I lift a cookie out and snap it in half, giving part to Prim. It's almost like she's never had one before, the way she savors it.

Rye is sitting at the counter, which surprises me. I knew Leaven was back from school – my room was no longer just mine – but I didn't know Rye had come back yet. "What are you doing here?" I ask.

He looks up from the dough he's kneading and smiles. "Miss me?"

"Not much," I joke.

Rye tears off a chunk of dough and chucks it at me, making Prim giggle. It hits me in the cheek as I try to dive out of the way. "I got in this morning. You were already gone," he says, his eyes traveling down to Prim, who my father has sat at the decorator's table while he readies some cake pans. "She's a little young to be your girlfriend, isn't she?" he teases.

I'm about to tell him off when Prim speaks first. "Oh, I'm not his girlfriend," she beams. "I'm his girlfriend's sister."

"Prim!" I exclaim as my father and brother both erupt into laughter. "She's just my friend!"

"Oh, oh, oh!" Rye laughs, walking away from the dough to put me in a headlock. "And the truth comes out! You weren't gonna tell me!"

"Boys!" Dad says. He's trying really hard to hide his chuckle but it's not really working. "Stop it. You're being terrible role models for Primrose."

Rye ruffles my hair and jerks his arm a little in his chokehold, teasing me silently. I pretend to gag and he reluctantly lets go, only to sit beside Prim and nudge her shoulder. "I'm Rye, your future brother-in-law."

I slap a hand over my face – and my reddening cheeks – when she extends her hand to him and they shake. "You can call me Prim."

He smiles and winks at her. "It's very nice to meet you, Prim." Then he turns back to me. "Oh, stop with the pouting! I'm just teasing you. Dad already told me about Katniss and," he nudges Prim again, "how we're going to be making a cake for a certain girl's thirteenth birthday."

When Prim's eyes widen, I forgive her for encouraging my brother and realize the call to warn my dad of my plan was the best decision I ever made. I was planning cupcakes, but my father always did go above and beyond. He loves kids, so it shouldn't have surprised me.

"Really?" she asks.

Rye nods. "What's your favorite flavor?"

Prim can't decide, so Rye shows her how to do marble cake in a zebra pattern. She's so enthralled by everything. She tells us about how Haymitch and Katniss can't really cook. They have someone Haymitch knows make their food – always steamed, fresh, and organic – if Katniss is sick or, when she's healthy, they eat out. The last time Haymitch let her try to bake something Katniss had burned their cookbook. She admits that she loves going downtown to look at the wedding cakes in the window of the specialty dessert shop because they're so pretty.

By the time the cake is done and cooled, my father has taken over for Rye. He shows her how to smooth the buttercream and teaches her to color the frosting. He has her practice flowers on parchment paper before helping her decorate the cake with pink roses and purple lattice detailing on the sides. While my father gives her a tour, I add a light blue primrose in the center to top it off and write _Happy Birthday, Prim!_ in yellow.

I can hear my father speaking with a costumer – Mrs. Cartwright, actually, from the sound of it – and Prim eagerly helping him at the desk, when Rye comes to sit beside me on the bench.

"You do know I was just teasing you, right?" he asks. I nod. "How's she doing?"

Turning to look at him, I realize my father has clued him in on everything he knows about the situation with Katniss.

"She's good."

Rye nods his head and we sit there for a minute before he smirks at me. "I don't know how you do it," he says. "I would have run straight for the hills. But, you were always better than me." He thinks for a moment and then points a finger at me. "Don't tell anyone I said that."

"Are you kidding? I'm telling_ everyone_ you said that."

We chuckle and then Rye stands up, ruffling my hair and moving back toward the dough he was kneading. My brothers and I are not Katniss and Prim. These moments are few and far between for us. Maybe it's because we're growing older that we can finally connect. I'm no longer the little kid running after him and Leaven while they leave me in the dust claiming I'm too little to join.

Prim sighs when she sees the primrose I've put on her cake. She carries it out with pride and when we drive back toward the state capitol, she thanks me at least ten times.

"This was a great birthday," she says. "Thank you!"

"No problem."

Her favorite radio station plays in the background but this time her heels don't click. She's too afraid to ruin the cake in her lap. She watches the horses and tells me that she didn't mind Cray. I had to stop and get gas and she moseyed right on in to the store. She charmed everyone in town. I shouldn't have been surprised to see that Cray wasn't immune to her either. He even gave a lollipop and hid his magazine so she wouldn't see.

"I can't wait to show Katniss and Uncle Haymitch my cake!" she says as we ride the elevator to Katniss's floor. I open the door and let her walk in first. "I can't believe you know how to frost a primrose! I–"

I look up. Haymitch is sitting with Katniss in her bed. He rubs her back and murmurs in her ear, but he looks like he's at some sort of loss as to what to do. Her face is contorted to hold a expression of sheer misery. She takes a deep inhale, but her exhale is a series of dry heaves, one right after the other. Her body lurches forward. And, each time hers does, I feel my stomach lurch as well.

"Katniss!" Prim says, setting her cake down on one of the chairs and running to the bed to sit down.

"She's just having a rough day, blondie," Haymitch says, tugging on Prim's braid, much like I've seen Katniss do. And, maybe that's what he's trying to do, do what Katniss does. That's what I've been trying to do – give Prim what Katniss wanted her to have, do what Katniss couldn't do herself.

Prim leans forward and kisses her sister's forehead. "I love you," she says.

For the first time, I have to excuse myself from Katniss's room before I do something stupid in front of her. Like cry.

* * *

Mr. Crane stops me on my way out. The annual telethon is set to air in June and Katniss is normally their main story. However, given her current state, she cannot be present to speak. I think I already know what he's going to ask before he does.

"We were thinking of going in a different direction this year," Crane tells me. "We always highlight the children's cancer stories because it's what people think of when they think of us. We have one of the premier cancer programs this side of the country. However, we want to expand and Mr. Snow thought the telethon would be a wonderful way to introduce the new rehabilitation program."

He doesn't even ask. He just assumes I understand what he wants from his introduction. And, when I don't answer, he assumes I'm too thankful for the opportunity to share my story to speak. He hands me the information. It doesn't seem too bad. I speak for ten minutes. Then I'm done.

And, if it means Katniss is safe from being questioned, I'm all for it.

The interview is on a Monday night and is located at the studio of the local television station, WCAP 13. I made the unfortunate mistake of telling my father and Rye about it, so naturally my brother's big mouth ensured the entire town would be watching it tonight. Everyone already knows my story. I don't really care to have them watch me play up how great a program it is. Katniss, who will remain in the hospital until further notice, has even told me she'll be watching to _ensure I don't mess up her legacy_, to which Haymitch told me I'd have to drop dead on screen to do any worse than she ever did. It doesn't surprise me that Katniss and public speaking do not go hand-in-hand. Prim definitely got that gene in their family.

So, I don't know why I feel slightly nervous when one of the anchors comes up beside me.

The man, who I recognize as my mother's favorite anchor Caesar Flickerman, winks at me. At the end of the night, if the station raises the goal amount, he's set to dye his hair blue for a month. He's wearing a special blue suit in preparation. "Just relax," he says. "It's not bad."

And then he goes out to introduce the show.

My story is the finale, taking over Katniss's coveted position. However, as I listen, I feel like mine is in no way as impactful as some of the other stories. First is the story of twins diagnosed with different cancers one year apart. The boy, a very handsome blond named Gloss, had some sort of tumor in his leg. His sister was diagnosed the next year with thyroid cancer. Both smile at Caesar after their introduction film and explain how wonderful their doctors were and how thankful they are to be alive. The next boy, Brutus, talks about congenital heart disease and how he's now a football player. He, like Katniss, doesn't seem foreign to this. The crowd already seems to know him. They speak to a woman named Annie, who talks about the tutoring program the hospital has set up and about how she wishes it had been available for her.

They cut to a commercial break and then I'm set to go on.

The psychologist working with Katniss insisted that she make a list of things she knows are true after she wakes from a nightmare or if she hallucinates again due to medications or fever or anything else. Sometimes, when I walk in the room, I'll hear her talking to herself or whoever is in the room.

_My name is Katniss Everdeen. I am seventeen years old. I am in the hospital. I have leukemia. I am in a relapse. Prim is at school. Peeta is at school. They are not dead._

Right when the camera flashes, telling Caesar Flickerman he's on air again, I decide to give it a try myself. I reach into my back pocket and withdraw the picture of the mockingjay Katniss gave me. I've had it hanging on my wall since I found it again nine months ago. Today I'm going to give it back to its rightful owner, if she wants it back. I figured it might give her strength.

_My name is Peeta Mellark. I am seventeen years old. I live in Miner Falls. I screwed up my knee trying to impress Katniss Everdeen. I am now doing a telethon in her place. I want to see her. I think I might be in love with her._

It orients me and I draw my courage from hers. I listen to the film introduction they have on me. They've already interviewed Dr. Chaff about my injury, the fact that without reconstructive surgery my quality of life would have suffered greatly. They interviewed my parents about how wonderful the staff was to our family during my surgery and period of recovery. They interviewed Finnick about my rehabilitation. My story, apparently, is the one they want people to identify with. Not everyone has a kid with cancer or a heart defect, but most parents have had a kid get injured doing something. Of course, mine is a worst-case scenario, but they're pulling the _this happens all the time_ card.

Then, Caesar motions for me to come out.

He's surprisingly easy to talk to, but I feel as though my scripted answers are forced. Yes, I liked Seeder and my other nurses. I feel indebted to Dr. Chaff and his crew for allowing me to have full motion of my knee again, Finnick as well for giving me the ability to do everything I could do before, and even some things I couldn't. But, when he asks me what the biggest aid in my recovery was, I let the words flow.

"I think it was actually the encouragement of other patients," I say. "Kids who have walked these halls before me and could show me, not tell me, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel."

"So, you made friends with the others in the rehabilitation program?"

The more I think about it, I don't remember a single kid's name from my months of rehab. All I remember is Katniss. Katniss, Rue, Prim, little Posy with her asthma and her mockingjay picture, Katniss's nurses, Effie, Portia, and so many others that haven't gotten recognition for what they do yet.

"Actually, no. As you know, I was volunteering here when I had my accident. I met so many different people, patients, volunteers, and staff members. It was these people who weren't part of my case but were still concerned about my wellbeing that helped me."

Caesar nods. "Anyone in particular?"

"There is this one girl," I tell him. "Neither of us knew each other really. We were originally from the same town. Even when my spirit was dying from the grueling work, she was there to encourage me. Or, actually, she just scowled most of the time and called me a wimp until I did the exercise right."

The studio audience laughs and Caesar chuckles at my admission. "Seems like a motivator," he says.

"It's more than that," I tell him. "Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive. Well, spirits alive, that is. It makes a bond…it changes you. I think it made me a better person."

My interview ends on the note that the hospital changed my life and made me a better person. I don't really care as long as Katniss saw and realizes just what she means to me. While I drive to the hospital, I come to the realization that it doesn't hurt quite so much anymore that Katniss isn't in love with me. Like I told Caesar, it's more than that by now. We've been through so much together, from the letter writing to the rehab to this, that I know I can't survive without her – whatever way, shape or form she comes in.

When I arrive to her room, Haymitch and Prim are nowhere to be seen. She's silently laying in her bed, her fingers tying knots in a piece of rope Finnick gave her to work with to exercise her fingers. She doesn't look up at me. _Now I've done it_, I think. She knows my feelings for her and now she's probably angry with me for talking about her on television.

"Is there anything I should apologize for?" I ask.

She looks up from her rope and doesn't say anything, but she shakes her head. She looks back down to her rope, fighting some inner battle. So, I do what I always planned on doing tonight. I take the mockingjay picture out of my pocket and smooth out the folds, holding it out to her. She doesn't look up at first but when she sees I'm not moving my hand, she does.

I think we all have moments where we know everything is about to change. Sometimes we don't realize it. Sometimes we're all too conscious. If it's possible, I think I have a little of both. I know that this is where Katniss will tell me to get out or stay and, just as I've told her from the very beginning, I will do as she asks.

Katniss stretches her hand out and takes the picture. She lifts the skin where her eyebrows would normally be in surprise.

"You still have this?"

I'm too nervous to say anything, so all I do is nod. She runs her fingers over rough crayon marks she created over a decade ago. We sit in complete silence for a moment as she stares and I will her to say something. Anything. Just indicate that she still needs me.

But, Katniss was never one for words. Instead she rolls her eyes. "I was a terrible colorer," she says. And then she looks up at me and smiles. I have never seen anything more beautiful in the world.

"Eh, you were five," I tell her, feeling the corner of my lips upturn. "I'm sure you're a little better now."

She nods and bluntly asks, "Why do you stay?"

My throat constricts. I could answer her literally and say because she asked me to, but that is not what she's prying about at all. She's staring at my lips so I know her question isn't really about my physical presence. She wants to know if I really am attracted to her. Why I put myself through watching her suffer even though it rips me apart. Why I won't leave her, even when I was five and all I had was a picture I could tuck away for safekeeping.

"You know why," I tell her, not wanting her to trample over me again like she did weeks ago. "Please, don't make me say it again."

She nods again and looks away from me, away from my lips, and back down at the mockingjay picture. "You said it was a little girl who drew a mockingjay that reminded you of me?" she asks. I nod. "I'll have to thank her."

Katniss really doesn't understand the effect she has. With merely her words, which she claims to be so terrible at, I feel my heart begin to hope again. Maybe, when all this is said and done, maybe she'll give in. Or, maybe she'll give in right here and now. I just hope she realizes what she's doing this time and she's not leading me on again.

I shake my head and try to put the thoughts out of my mind. I remember Posy and her drawing, the little girl waving it gleefully in front of my face. "Posy was just in the asthma program," I say. "She doesn't come often. Just when she has an attack."

The room stops. I swear I feel the temperature drop ten degrees. Katniss turns her head so sharply I can see the muscles and ligaments in her neck tense. She sucks in a shaky breath and her hands begin to shake. I reach forward and touch her shoulder.

"Katniss?"

"Posy?" she asks. She shakes her head. "A little redhead? Big green eyes?"

"Do you know her?" I ask. It wouldn't surprise me. Between Katniss's stays and Prim's volunteering, they must know their fair share of patients.

Katniss closes her eyes, shaking her head. "No, no, no," she whispers, dropping the picture to the bed. She bites her bottom lip with her teeth so hard it begins to bleed. She's panicking and I start to panic watching her. I don't know what I've said to trigger a panic attack in her, but I'm just about to get help, finally out of my mind, when the door opens and Prim rushes into the room while Haymitch rushes back out.

"Katniss!" Prim exclaims, leaping onto the bed and wrapping her arms around her. "Katniss!"

Cinna and Haymitch come in almost instantly and Cinna sticks an IV in her central line that carries sedative. It takes a few moments, but she stops shaking and her eyes begin to close.

* * *

Katniss Everdeen is my own specific form of torture. It's self-inflicted. It's chronic. It will never go away.

I sit up half the night, listening to Leaven's quiet snores, trying to figure out how the mockingjay picture, and more specifically Posy's role in reminding me of it, sent her into a full-fledged panic attack. I come up with absolutely nothing except that maybe, once upon a time, she knew a little girl named Posy, with pale red hair and bright green eyes.

When I told Haymitch, Cinna, and Prim about what I had done to trigger it, all three of them had reacted strangely. Prim stayed by Katniss's side, stroking her hand even though her sister was sedated. Cinna had excused himself to continue his rounds. Haymitch had bolted out of the room, returning twenty minutes later with Katniss's scrapbook. I had wanted to ask Prim about it, but she was so focused on whispering in Katniss's ear that I had just quietly left the room. And now, here I am, staring at the clock on my bedside table that tells me it's four in the morning. I have to wake up in less than three hours. Sleep is futile.

So, I get up.

As quietly as I can, I grab my sketchbook from the desk and head out into the hall. I avoid the creaky floorboard in front of my parents' room and skip the top step on my way down the stairs. Once I've made it outside to the front porch, I sit on the stoop and look out over the town. As the sun begins to rise, I know my family will be waking soon. At least Rye and Leaven will be, as they promised to help Dad at the bakery this summer. He's already there so I figure I have at least another hour before someone finds me.

For the first time, I can't draw. I feel as though I've lost my mind. I'm walking around in the haze that is Katniss Everdeen, the girl that has let me into so much of her life and yet a huge chunk of it is still a complete mystery to me. So, instead of drawing, I look at the works I've already completed.

The first pages feature simple sketches. Rue helping girls at the coloring table. Prim reading a book. I pause at one of Katniss, one I drew just after I took her to Miner Falls. Her braid sticks out under an old hat my father tossed me to give her while we walked around, the top of it covered in snowflakes. Her eyes, such a pale gray and so full of emotion, took me hours to get right. Here they sparkle with excitement, possibly happiness, and she looks so much lighter in spirit, as if for this one moment she didn't have the weight of the world riding on her shoulders. I thumb through the pages again, skimming briefly over my nightmares. I see Katniss burst into flames more than once and I flip even quicker.

I turn back and stop on the picture I had been drawing when Prim's text message came about Katniss's trip to the ER after her first round of chemotherapy. I never ended up finishing it. All I have is an outline of Katniss, bundled up in the flannel blanket, guarded from the nippy May night, the mask over her face protecting her from harm. Light pencil marks meant to be my arms ghost around her.

My fingers shut the book and I lean back into the porch, the old rickety wood creaking with my movements. I want her to let me all the way in so I can show her I won't leave. I'm fairly certain it's not possible for me to live my life without her in it. Even if she were to ask me to leave her alone, she has left an imprint on me, the kind that isn't wiped clean by time. So, I'll continue to torture myself, thinking that one day she might reciprocate the feelings, because it's almost a guilty pleasure at this point.

I'll admit it. It may have been a joke before, but I am definitely a masochist. I enjoy hoping for realities that will never exist. Katniss doesn't believe in love or marriage. And, out of anyone I know, she deserves to have her opinions left untouched. It's really the only part of her life over which she has any control.

"What the hell are you doing up?"

I open my eyes to see Rye standing over me, Leaven yawning behind him. He shakes his head, the blond curls all three of us inherited from Dad swaying in the morning light. Leaven glares at me.

"What did I tell you? He's taunting us," he hisses, walking down the steps and jumping in Rye's car, his head hitting the dash as he attempts a few more seconds of stolen slumber.

Rye rolls his eyes but kneels down beside me. He's got classic big brother syndrome. Even when we were little, he always felt the need to protect us, especially from our mother's nagging expectations. Maybe it was because he had it so much easier and he felt guilty or maybe it's just his nature. I don't know. I asked him about it once, when he punched Slate Colliery for spreading a rumor about Leaven back when I was twelve and he was sixteen.

"You're my brothers," he told me. "I'm the only one who can shit on you."

He's gotten a bit more sophisticated since then, I've noticed.

"You okay?" he asks. Again, with the oldest sibling duty, he feels he needs to ask me this all the time now that Dad told him about Katniss. Most of the time I ignore him and he leaves me alone. I like Leaven's response to finding out about Katniss better – he acts as if nothing's changed. He doesn't even like being around when Rye asks about her and finds quick excuses to leave the room before we say anything about Katniss and her shaky future.

"I'm fine."

He nods and digs through his pocket. He holds out a small velvet box and, maybe due to my lack of sleep, it freaks me out. "Are you proposing to me?"

"No," Rye scoffs. "You're not pretty enough." I refrain from the biting comment that Rye, Leaven, and I look exactly alike. "No, I got this in the will when Grandmother died. But, I'm not going to use it and Leaven's about as romantic as a doorknob, so I thought I'd give it to you. I was planning on giving it to you later, but since you weren't in your room when I woke up sleeping beauty over there, I figured now was as good a time as any."

I eye him warily. It's five in the morning and he decided to give it to me now?

He grins and ruffles my hair. "Maybe one day you'll have someone to give it to," he says.

I silently consider the idea that he's doing this to cheer me up, some sick roundabout way for him to attempt to protect me from the truth that Katniss is fighting for her life. Once the two of them take off, I walk back up the stairs and put the ring box on my dresser before lying down in my bed, waiting for my alarm to sound and my day to finally begin. The small square box stares at me, almost taunting me. I should have just handed it back. I'm never getting married because Katniss Everdeen doesn't believe in it.

I roll over and throw my pillow over my head. Sleep still doesn't come. Instead, I continue to torture myself with daydreams of a future where I can give the ring to a girl whose dark hair is braided over her shoulder. Her pale gray eyes scream her excitement as she nods and I slip it on her finger.

* * *

Rue understands why I'm fidgety on Tuesdays, knowing Katniss is upstairs and I'm stuck coloring with little kids. Once, Katniss came down with Finnick to see me, but it took a little too much effort. Instead they take their walks around the oncology floor. On good days they make her use a walker and she absolutely hates it. On bad days, she can't get out of bed and they don't end up walking. Instead, Finnick does some sort of massage on her feet and she fumbles with her rope. On the worst days, she's not numb. She feels shooting pain and no one is allowed to touch her. She becomes overly sensitive and even sheets can make her scream in pain.

But, on the bright side, Dr. Paylor seems to think the symptoms will subside when Katniss's body is no longer being bombarded with high dose medications and she's well again.

No one says anything about the alternative but we all know that her symptoms might never go away and she might not get well.

After my shift, I go to her room. I find her sitting in bed under sheets, her scrapbook sitting on her lap as she flips through the pages. I wonder briefly if she gets the same calm for looking at it as I do while drawing. I knock on the door to signal my arrival and she looks up.

"Hi," I say, walking in but staying just far enough away that she has time to move the book if she wants. She doesn't.

"Hi," she replies, scooting over in her bed to make room for me. "I want to show you something."

I sit down on the bed and remember the last time I saw this scrapbook. I remember the pictures of her and her blond friend, her and the handsome boy who could be her brother. When I look down at the pages, I'm surprised at what I see. There are no pictures, no people, no boys looking at her longingly.

"Are those…?" I ask, the question falling dead on my lips.

She nods and runs a hand over one of my letters, glued into the pages of her book. I recognize my handwriting and remember how long it took me to write them, trying to be as painstakingly neat as I possibly could. My father used to get annoyed with all the times I asked for his help spelling words while he was trying to do something else. I wanted those letters to be perfect because, in my little head, perfect was what Katniss needed.

I had no idea she kept them.

The letter she's looking at currently is the last one I ever sent her. Under it she has pasted in the mockingjay picture I gave to her last night. "I think you saved my life," she says quietly. "At least, that's what my parents used to say."

My head spins to face her. For a minute I think she's joking but I realize very quickly she is beyond serious. "What?" I breathe.

She doesn't turn to me, instead focusing on the letter. "I caught meningitis when I was five. They told my parents that they needed my body to throw a Hail Mary. They even let Haymitch and Maysilee bring Prim into ICU to say goodbye, it was that bad."

I am not following my involvement in this story at all. "What does this have to do with me?"

"Your last letter came in the mail that day," she tells me, finally looking up from the book. Her eyes are welling with tears and I feel my own breath catch. "My parents put it on the table next to my bed and told me that they weren't going to read it to me until I woke up."

We fall into silence. The room's constant noises – the beeping of her machines, the chatter in the hallways – seem to disappear. I swear the only sound in the room is my own heart thumping away in my chest as I stare at her.

"You woke up," I say. It's unnecessary. It's obvious. But I find myself almost questioning the outcome of this story, as if she's not sitting right in front of me. Living. Breathing. Alive.

She nods her head and looks down at the page. "It took me a long time to regain my strength, my body was exhausted. But my parents read that letter to me, just as they promised, and I told myself that one day I'd go back to Miner Falls and meet you and that stupid cat that lived under your porch."

My heart shatters in both excitement and agony. She thought of me. It makes me want to dance around the room. But, then I remember, that this was the last letter I sent her. I all but wrote her off. "I'm sorry," I say.

She snaps her head to me. "What?" she demands.

"I'm sorry I stopped writing to you," I tell her.

"I was a little disappointed," she says. "But then I figured I'd meet you when I got better. I remember that I told my mom that my Make-A-Wish was to meet you." She giggles. "Obviously, that didn't happen."

Her laugh is contagious so we both fill the room with chuckles and giggles. "What would you have done when you met me?" I ask.

She suddenly grows serious. "I'd thank you for the letters," she says. "And thank you for saving my life."

There are so many moments where I question who Katniss Everdeen really is behind the tough exterior. The girl who has spent her entire life doing nothing but surviving has taught me many things. I hardly believe that my letters had that much impact on her life. How could letters from a classmate back home that she didn't even know really encourage her to cling to life? But she kept the letters, she put them in a book that was personal to her, cementing me into her life so that one day, when she met me, she could repay me for the letters that kept her going.

And then, to pay her debt, she lets me in.

She flips through the book. She has a page for her father and I see that she gets her looks from him. There are pictures of them at nearly every occasion. He holds her in the minutes after she was born. She sits on his lap at holidays. There are some pictures of them from when she's sick, pale and bald and tired, but most are in the years when she's well. He teaches her how to ride a bike. He's got her over his shoulder at the beach.

The next page is for her mother and I see that this is where Prim gets her appearance. Katniss's mother was a beautiful woman; there is no doubt about that. She cradles Katniss in her christening gown looking bright and young, but as Katniss grows and – specifically after she gets sick – her mother seems to age rapidly. The lines on her face grow heavy with worry. There are many more pictures of her with a sick Katniss. She sits outside in a wheelchair with Katniss burying her face into her neck. She sits in the bed with her. She rocks her to sleep. It is apparent that her daughter's illness, coupled with their financial situation and her husband never being around, weighed heavily on her.

The next few pages I've seen before, but now have Katniss to narrate. The little blond girl on the page I'd seen in my previous snooping was Madge Undersee. I feel terrible that I didn't recognize her, but then again I didn't really know her. Apparently, Madge liked to frequent the coloring table and Katniss would make her mockingjays when they went together.

"I really liked Madge," Katniss says. She sighs and shakes her head. "But I can't even really remember her now."

And then she flips the page to the one I've been dying to find out about yet dreading at the same time.

"This is Gale," she says. She pauses, not saying anything, and I wait. "He was my best friend."

When she spoke of the others, the words toppled out of her mouth with ease. She has a hard time explaining Gale. They met when she was eleven and in remission. He had just turned thirteen. She was receiving platelets and he introduced himself, asking if she was there _for the refreshments, too_. He, like Madge, was also from Miner Falls, so the two bonded over it. Coincidentally, their fathers had worked the same shift in the mines before they closed so their families bonded. It takes her nearly an hour to get all of this information out and I tell her three times that she doesn't have to tell me.

"What happened to him?" I know what happened. I just feel that she needs to say it and I want her to know she can tell me anything.

Katniss blinks. "He relapsed and it spread. It ended up in his brain. They sent him to the arena." I look up at her in confusion and she tilts her head. "Hospice. We call it the arena. It's where you go to die."

"Why do you call it that?"

She shrugs. "Because everyone uses the metaphor of fighting – fighting for our lives, fighting the cancer. We're really just playing a game. Some people live, some die. You win or you lose. And, when you're getting ready to die, it's like you're playing the last few minutes of your life. Like basketball, hockey, any sport, the clock runs out."

I feel like I'm going to be sick. The thought that kids have come up with this terminology makes vomit ignite my esophagus.

"Katniss, why did you want to show me this?" I ask.

She sighs. "Do you remember when I had my panic attack yesterday?" How could I forget? "I was…well, I was going to tell you something. But then…"

We sit in silence for so long I nearly forget the train of thought we were on. Suddenly she blurts out, "Gale was my first kiss."

I am shattered for about five seconds before I realize Gale is dead. Then I feel terrible about being jealous of him. In fact, I have to swallow my vomit this time as it comes all the way up.

"We weren't…he was my best friend…and he asked if I would," she says, her voice short and choppy. "He said, _I had to do that. At least once_." She shakes her head, her eyes closed. "He said he'd send someone really good my way."

Again, we sit in silence. I think for a moment that she wants me to try and guess, but I'm so utterly lost in this conversation I have no clue how to even begin to piece this information together. Instead I wait for her to settle down.

"Posy Hawthorne, the little girl that drew that picture, is Gale's little sister," she says. "I taught her how to draw it."

The pieces align and the puzzle of Katniss's panic attack begins to take form. No wonder this scared her. What sort of coincidence is it that Gale's little sister is the one that drew the picture that led me to ask Rue about Katniss and ultimately follow Prim home to meet her for the first time?

"I feel like this is all some sort of dream," she says.

"This is real, Katniss," I tell her.

She looks at me for a long moment before resting her head on my chest, her body no longer able to continue telling stories of former friends and loved ones. As she sobs, I cradle her close to me, smelling the sanitizer on my hands.

* * *

In philosophy, there is a theory called Occam's razor, which states that the simplest solution is the best solution. Obviously, Katniss's cancer cells have never taken philosophy because, if they had, we'd be done by now.

Five days before Prim's graduation from lower school to upper school Dr. Heavensbee informs Haymitch that Katniss's leukemia cells are not responding to the treatments. It is time to try something else. The plan is to move forward with a stem cell transplant. The best-case scenario is that it will put her into a complete remission. The worst is that it doesn't take. It either works or it doesn't. After this the treatment options for Katniss are few and far between. It's like putting all of our eggs in one basket and then praying we pick up the right one when we lose it in a group of empty identical baskets.

Luckily, Prim is a match and the transplant can be done using her stem cells. Katniss hates this idea, not wanting to put her sister through anything for her benefit, and adamantly refuses treatment, even when her transplant specialist, Dr. Coin, tells her Prim will barely feel any side effects. So Haymitch decides to lie to her. While Katniss begins her pre-transplantation therapy, we all pretend she's got an unrelated donor off the national registry. I'm not sure if this is entirely ethical, but without the transplant Katniss will probably die. It's not as if we're attempting to convince her. She doesn't even ask whose cells she's receiving, just thinking we wouldn't dare used Prim's.

In reality, Prim will receive shots of filgrastim for five days to increase the number of stem cells in her blood. On the last day she will donate the blood-making cells via a procedure called apheresis, where she will be hooked up to a machine that takes her blood out through a needle in one arm, removes her stem cells, and returns the blood to her body through a needle in her other arm. It takes a couple hours. She'll be back to her normal routines in less than two weeks.

Katniss, on the other hand, will undergo high doses of chemotherapy coupled with radiation to kill her immune system, her bone marrow, and any cancer cells it can. Ultimately, the extreme toxicity of the treatments will kill her healthy cells too. When her white blood cell and neutrophil levels begin to decrease, she will be placed in isolation because even the mildest of germs will be able to kill her. When her body is ready, they will thaw Prim's stem cells and deliver them to her through her central line.

By the day of Prim's graduation, we're all wrecks.

The filgrastim shots give Prim headaches and bone pain in her hips. It's not terrible and she's given prescription strength Tylenol. When she's around Katniss she puts on a smile, still pretending that she's not doing anything or else Katniss will throw a temper tantrum. She, however, tells me privately that she feels guilty complaining about the pain because it's nothing compared to what Katniss is going through. It is true, but I tell her she can't compare it and that, hopefully, before long they'll both be better.

Haymitch doesn't sleep. He might as well be hooked up to an IV of caffeine with the amount of coffee he's drinking as he moves between Prim and Katniss. In order to help, I spend time with Prim. Since my school ended on the second day of Prim's shots, it gives me more free time.

By day three of her pre-transplant conditioning regimen, Katniss won't even let Prim or me in to see her. The radiation has seared her skin of her stomach, causing it to blister and peel. Because of where the radiation is aimed, she has terrible diarrhea and vomiting that she can't control. The chemotherapy is stronger than ever before and causes the lining of her throat to be so full of mucus she can barely breathe. Her mouth is filled with sores from the acidity of her constant vomit and she is fed through a feeding tube.

She's in such bad shape on the day of Prim's graduation and donation that I offer to take Haymitch's spot in the audience, but Prim insists on seeing Katniss prior to her ceremony. Katniss relents, but I think it's mostly because she has other things on her mind. Either way, when Prim tells me we're stopping to see her, I grab the ring box off my dresser and stuff it in my pocket. I'm not sure why, but I figured it to be a decent idea at the time.

As I walk in the room behind Prim, I begin to wonder just what exactly I was thinking.

The Katniss lying in front of us in her bed is in no way the Katniss she was even five days ago. Her body is fatigued so she barely moves except to suction out mucus from her throat or dry heave. Prim takes her hand and tells her to smile to which she does for a moment but it turns into a grimace. As Prim talks encouragement to her, I look up at the bag of chemotherapy attached to her IV pole that snakes to her central line. Usually she has Prim put stickers on it or a post-it note that says something like _I love you_. Today, it's Haymitch's handwriting I recognize on the post-it that says only two words.

_Stay alive._

Prim pulls away and I take the chair she was just in, leaning in as close as I can to look in her eyes. "I have something for you," I tell her. I withdraw the box and Prim gasps. I'm just glad Haymitch used this time to go get more coffee. Katniss's eyes widen in fear but I just chuckle. "I'm not proposing to you."

Katniss lets out a sigh of relief and Prim lets out a disappointed grunt.

"But, I do want you to have this. It was my grandmother's." I open up the box and take out the ring. I know that Katniss's body is swollen from the treatments, so I put the ring on a gold chain that held the cross the Cartwrights gave me when I was baptized. It's big enough to wrap around Katniss's neck. I asked Cinna on my way in if it would be alright to give to her and he said they'd have to put it in a bag once her immune system started to drop off, but for now she can hold it.

She doesn't say anything, so I put the ring in her hand. "It was her engagement ring," I explain. "She left it to Rye when she died and he gave it to me so I could give it to someone special one day. I want you to have it. My grandmother was the strongest person I ever knew."

The reason Rye gave it to me is because he's a traditionalist. He wants to give his future fiancée a diamond, not a pearl. I kind of have to agree with him, but this seems fitting. If I were to give this ring to anyone, I'd want it to be given to Katniss Everdeen.

"I can't," she chokes.

"You can," I say, cutting her off before she tries to say anything else. She lifts the suction to her mouth so she can breathe better and I swallow the lump in my throat.

Just when I think she might just chuck it at my face, she holds it out to me and lifts her head. I clasp it around her neck and hope she takes the strength from it. My final gift. I can't give her letters and before long I won't be able to even see her because I won't be allowed in when she's in insolation. Guilt mixes in because I know I'm partially giving it to her so she'll remember me.

And then she does something I never thought she'd do. She lifts her three middle fingers to her lips and then presses them to my cheek. We're not allowed to kiss her for fear of spreading germs and infection, so I know this is as close to a kiss on the cheek as she can get, and a goofy grin spreads over my face as she moves her three fingers from my cheek to my lips.

She drops her hand and dry heaves, but the moment isn't lost on me. The Cheshire cat grin is still spread on my face when she waves us off, aware that we need to head to Prim's school, and Haymitch returns. I think I'll continue smiling all day.

In the car Prim nudges my shoulder but we don't say anything. I know that I don't want to jinx it and I have to believe she's thinking the same thing.

I may have just given Katniss hope.

* * *

The very next day Katniss's levels begin to drop and she is immediately placed in isolation. Prim's procedure went as well as expected and she's feeling better. Despite not being able to see Katniss, I still make the trek to the capitol and spend the day playing board games on the front porch with Prim.

Waiting is excruciating. It's like being five on Christmas Eve. We wait for her body to be okay for transplantation. We wait two days after that to ensure the drugs have left her system. The whole procedure of the transplant takes an hour of infusion through her central line, all of which Haymitch says she sleeps through, and then we wait for word that Prim's stem cells have grafted and begin forming new blood cells.

Prim volunteers to keep her mind off of it while I go visit Finnick for my rehab. I'm down to one day a week and yet I see him more now than I have in months since he visits with Katniss most days of the week.

"How's she doing?" he asks after we're through working. I can see Johanna sitting on an exercise ball crane her neck to hear better.

"It hasn't grafted yet," I say. "But it's only been a few days, so it's not expected. I don't know. I'm just terrified it's not going to work."

Finnick nods and pats my shoulder. "Just stay positive," he says. "It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart."

I look up at him curiously. "How do you know?" I ask.

The left side of his mouth curls up into a grin. He reaches into the back pocket of his khakis and withdraws his wallet, fishing out a picture to hand to me. "That's my wife, Annie. She runs the tutoring program here at the hospital."

The woman in the photograph is lovely, if somewhat bedraggled, with dark hair that cascades in waves to her shoulders. Her eyes are so piercing and green they look like emeralds. She's sitting with Finnick and together they do look like a handsome couple. She looks vaguely familiar and it takes me a few minutes to remember that she spoke about tutoring during the telethon. Her presentation had been right before mine.

"I remember her from the telethon," I say.

"She's amazing. She works with Katniss, actually." Finnick grins widely. "Our senior year of high school she was diagnosed with aplastic anemia and needed a bone marrow transplant," he tells me. "I just about lost my mind worrying about her."

"So you learned to stay put together?"

He nods. "Yeah. You and Katniss remind me a lot of Annie and me."

All this time, months and months of knowing Finnick, I never once thought he carried a burden like mine. Perhaps its because his wife is no longer ill or perhaps he just hides his fear well. I'm inclined to believe, after the way I know Prim acted before Katniss's relapse, that the fear never leaves. But the way Finnick tells the story and the look in his eyes when he inspects the photograph makes me believe that he's inviting me into this area of his life to calm me. He obviously loves her and once feared for her life. I find myself in the same position with Katniss.

I hand him back his picture. "Did you love her from the first time you saw her?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "No, she crept up on me," he smiles.

It makes me smile too, thinking that perhaps I've crept up on Katniss, like Annie did to Finnick, because she certainly didn't creep up on me. No, Katniss Everdeen stormed right into my life like a tornado, taking everything in its path and replacing it with her.

I think of Finnick every time I want to pace. Instead of worrying, I draw or bake or play cards with Prim if I'm with her. Come what may, what is destined to happen will happen. Right now, the little soldiers in Katniss's body are fighting their battles, surging to greatness and tearing down walls her cancer has drawn. I draw pictures of this trying to keep my mind focused on the present instead of the what ifs.

Prim calls me twenty days after Katniss's transplant. It's a hot day in early July. I'm working in the bakery with my father and Rye, sweating while slaving at the ovens in the heat wave. When Prim calls, I actually hope it's Hersh telling me that we're heading to the lake. But it's not and I would take Prim's phone call over any lake trip. She says Katniss's bone marrow has started to make new white blood cells.

It means engraftment. It means success. It means hope.

* * *

Katniss has to remain in isolation until her white blood cell count rises above five hundred. After that she can be placed in a private room. Dr. Heavensbee and his team will be checking her blood work regularly and any supportive therapies will be provided to her at the snap of a finger – transfusions, antibiotics, medications, and specific nutrition help from a dietitian. After her white blood cell count reaches a thousand she may be able to go home for the first time in months and be seen daily as an outpatient.

Dr. Coin, who specializes in children's stem cell transplants and is working with Dr. Heavensbee, tells us to be cautiously optimistic. Any and all of this can go downhill with a single bad lab result. She also tells Prim multiple times that if it should go wrong, it is in no way her fault.

Since we can't visit, Prim and I find other activities to occupy our time. Prim plans the t-shirt design for the Relay for Life team and she invites me to become a team member. Her school offers the use of their track and facilities for the event and Prim, for being only thirteen, is heavily involved.

On the Fourth of July, I take Prim to Miner Falls for the festivities. There's always a festival with face painting and party games at the fire department's fields. She says she's never been to anything like it. Katniss isn't the biggest fan of fireworks – after remembering her hallucinations and nightmares, I can't say it surprises me – and Haymitch doesn't care for crowds so she usually goes with the Hawthornes to watch the capitol's display. Ours aren't nearly as fancy or spectacular, but she sits with Rye and his friends on a blanket, staring up at the sky as if she's never seen anything like it.

Other days I help out at the bakery. I keep my phone on me at all times, just in case I receive a message from Prim. I fear the worst, but most of the time her texts or calls are nothing bad and just a thirteen-year-old who wants to talk to someone who understands what she's going through at this very moment in time. Her school friends do not understand like I do, she says.

And then, after what seems like decades, we are allowed to visit.

Hospital protocol requires Prim and I to basically prep for surgery. We get to wash our hands and arms like surgeons do on television before we're fitted with masks over our faces. Unlike when she was in isolation and Haymitch had to be covered from head to toe to be in the same room as her, Prim and I are allowed to wear our regular clothes.

She's swollen from steroids being used to fight infections from even beginning. She has pain medication pumping through her veins. She has a feeding tube. She requires platelet and red blood cell transfusions because it takes longer for her body to start creating them itself. But, when we walk through the door, she smiles and it makes all the fear of losing her seem worth it. Because she's here.

"Katniss!" Prim squeals.

"Hi, little duck," she says.

And I swear, in that moment, if I could only listen to her voice for the rest of my life and not hear another sound ever again, I would be the happiest man in the world.

She's weak and fatigued, so most of the conversation is lead by Prim, who tells her every last detail of what she's done in the weeks Katniss has been in isolation. Katniss smiles and listens with rapt attention, nodding at appropriate times and making faces. She asks questions every so often to clarify. I cross my arms and lean against the wall watching her, amazed that after everything she's been through she cares only for Prim's happiness.

"She's amazing," I tell Haymitch when he comes to stand beside me.

He turns and looks at me. I feel as though I'm being appraised. "She is," he agrees. "She really is."

Prim is a chatterbox and she talks until Katniss can't even keep her eyes open. I didn't even realize there were so many things she needed to tell her, but Prim's stories are so detailed, I think Katniss knows the exact dimensions of the rooms Prim entered and the specific colors Leevy used to paint a butterfly on her cheek at the Fourth of July festival.

I barely get a chance to speak more than three words to her. On our way out, I lean down to her as her eyelids flutter. "I'll see you soon," I say.

She opens her eyes, showing her pale gray irises to me, and smiles. She pats her lips with her three middle fingers and I lift up my own to touch my mask over my own. Then, her eyes close and I meet Prim at the door.

I'd like to believe that this is Katniss's way of telling me she loves me, but I know that I shouldn't be optimistic. Instead, I convince myself that it's her fatigue making her do things she wouldn't do. I tell myself that she's just being nice. It's torture, really, decoding her actions, trying to decide what is real and what is my mind playing games with me. When she's better and if we're ever alone, maybe I can pluck up the courage to ask her and maybe she'll surprise me with the answer I've been dying to hear.

* * *

I don't have a clue how she does it.

Primrose Everdeen may be the most persuasive person I've ever met and she doesn't even realize it. She and Delly sit at the table at the firehouse, collecting the donations at the Friday Dinner and Bingo Night. Usually, the firehouse does it once a month to raise money to buy new supplies, a new truck, stuff like that. Tonight, they're donating all of their profits to the American Cancer Society through Prim's Relay team. Delly, whose uncle is the chief and is usually at the table anyway, keeps the tally while Prim hands out t-shirts to anyone who donates.

"You know, I'm surprised we haven't done this before," Hersh says. We're leaning against the wall watching Prim animatedly talking to Mr. Walker, the tailor, about how Relay for Life works. "Given what happened."

I nod. "Maybe it was too sore of a subject."

Hersh shrugs. "Could be," he says. "Or it could just be her."

I watch Prim hand Mr. Walker his shirt with a smile and shake my head. It could very well just be Prim. I wonder how anyone can have the capacity to tell the girl no. She's just as amazing as her sister. She's known nothing but worry. For as long as she can remember Katniss has been sick, her parents are dead, and yet she graces the world with such a beautiful smile, not a cynical bone in her body. My grandmother would have called her a gentle soul.

"Do you think it would have gone over well if some random kids started raising money?" I ask, nodding my head to where Prim and Delly are now talking with Mr. Undersee.

The moment the mayor walked in, Hersh and I had both held our breaths and watched as he listened to Prim's speech from the corner of the hall. To be honest, I'd even forgotten he was there. The Undersee family self-destructed with the cluster, so I'd been worried about his reaction. But our mayor is a kind man and I see him pull out a check for Prim, a sad sort of remembrance in his smile. Prim's hand motions aren't so wild and extravagant. She's more subdued. This is a man whose lost his daughter to the same battle she's watched Katniss fight her entire life, she knows the pain of uncertainty. It's absolutely incredible to see Mr. Undersee come out like this, speaking to Prim, when he doesn't speak to anyone about this.

Hersh lets out a sigh. "No," he says. "It needed to be someone who smiles despite the struggle. It needed to be someone like her."

I walk off toward the firehouse floor, where chairs are set up around long plastic tables. Usually it stays segregated. People sit with the people they always sit with, the friends they're close to and know best. Tonight, that might be the case, but it's different. I don't know who started it, but someone put on his shirt and everyone seemed to follow. Even Mr. Undersee, who's taken the seat beside my father, has put it on over his button-up work shirt.

"Hey!"

Delly comes to stand beside me, squeals behind me reveal Hersh pulling Prim over his shoulder into the dining area. She holds out a shirt in her hand and smiles her hundred-watt grin. I take it in my hands and look at the front. It reads 'I support Team Mockingjay' over a blown up picture of one of the birds Katniss drew when she was five. It's been Prim's team name for years, but when I flip the back over, I see that she's added something else. Almost as if it's a name and number on the back of a jersey, she's had 'Miner Falls supports a world with more birthdays!' screen-printed. I can only imagine the cost of doing this, not only in money but time designing it and getting it done.

"I didn't donate," I tell her, holding the shirt back out to her.

Delly laughs. "I think you've done more than enough."

I throw my arm over her shoulder as we look out across the group of assembled townsfolk. It's not everyone, but it's a core assembly of intermingling groups. My mother, of course, sticks right close to her book club, but she's got her shirt on, probably telling her club about how wonderful Katniss is and how great it is that we're doing this, despite never meeting her. I roll my eyes, but look at Delly when she elbows me in the side.

"You did this," she says.

I shake my head. "No, Prim did this."

Delly rolls her eyes. "Prim couldn't do it alone," she says. "I think this is what this town needed. After all the bad, we found a way we could give back. It's what Mr. Undersee said when he came to the table. Said we were long overdue for something other than pity."

The majority of the families in this town have been affected in some way or another by the cluster. Hersh is right; it's surprising that something like this didn't happen sooner. But, maybe it's because we didn't have the right force to stand behind. I find Prim at the table with Hersh and Rye and some of the other kids. She catches my eyes for a brief moment before turning back to the table.

"He's right," I say. "He's definitely right."

* * *

Graft-versus-host disease is almost a guarantee after a stem cell transplant from a matched donor. It means that the donor cells see the body as foreign and begin to attack. Because it can be life-threatening, protocol at Children's requires transplant recipients to be given steroids and other drugs to prevent a serious reaction. In the middle of August, Katniss develops a rash on the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. By morning it has spread up her arms and legs and she is diagnosed officially with acute GVHD.

Despite its scary nature, I find out that a mild form of the disease, such as Katniss's, is seen as a good thing. Whereas Prim's stem cells are attacking Katniss's tissues, they are also attacking the cancer cells. They call it graft-versus-leukemia activity and, Dr. Heavensbee says, it's what we want.

It doesn't make it any less terrifying.

The whites of her eyes turn yellow with jaundice and she has terrible stomach cramps that require pain medication to be delivered through her central line. They treat the GVHD with low-dose prednisone, which causes facial swelling and makes it hard for her to control her emotions. It even makes her snap at Prim, which then makes her upset. The prednisone, coupled with her low platelet count, makes her bruise just by looking at her.

Haymitch takes Prim out more in order to catch up on _Prim Time_ and to give Katniss space when she needs it. When he hovers, he and Katniss tend to argue, which isn't good for anyone. They've spent so much time together these past few months, it's only natural that it would happen. So, while Prim and Haymitch head out for the day, I spend time with her.

We do as we've always done. We watch old seasons of sitcoms. We play movies on her laptop. I draw and she watches. We talk seldomly but we've become so comfortable with the silence it's nearly welcomed. I decide to wait for her. It's her turn to make the next move. It's not plausible the other way around. Katniss will barely let me look at her.

But the swelling does go down and the rash dissipates. The yellow of her eyes turns back to white. But, most importantly, by the beginning of September she's allowed to go home for the first time since May. Despite the fact that she must make daily trips to the hospital, it's like turning a new leaf. She still has a long way to go. She has her blood drawn each day to check her numbers to ensure the transplant is doing its job. We're waiting for the day Dr. Heavensbee says her blasts are below five percent, which will indicate that the graft-verses-leukemia activity was successful in eradicating the cancer. No one voices it, but we're also aware it might not happen. The graft could fail and reject. She might not be put into remission. She could go into remission only for it to come right back. Only time will tell. But, until then, we wait.

It seems like it's all we ever do.

* * *

Senior year brings a boatload of work. Our English class, which is for kids going on to college, spends part of each week working on application essays in addition to our reading list. It's not for lack of trying, but I just can't seem to write it. Whenever I try to sit down to do it, something more important is on my mind or nothing comes to me. I wrote half an essay about my knee before I gave up on it. My teacher tells me to give it time and the words will come, but I wonder if I could just draw my essay instead.

Finnick clears me to play soccer, but I decide against it. I would rather spend my time with Katniss and my mother absolutely hates it. When I tell her that I'm not playing after she asks for the schedule, I get an earful about how I'm ruining my prospects for college – as if dropping one extracurricular activity will do anything.

Rye heads back for his final year and she sobs about how proud she is of him. Leaven leaves with him, as both my brothers go to out-of-state private colleges where they leave their things in storage. My parents don't even need to go anymore to help, the two of them have everything figured out. So, naturally, when my father asks over dinner where I'm thinking of applying and I mention the state university in the capitol, my mother throws the biggest temper tantrum I've ever seen.

Which leads me to where I am now, sitting at the kitchen table looking at my mother, her face red with anger as she paces the floor.

"Have you thought about this at all?" Mother hisses.

Yes, I have. I have thought about how she's bragged to her friends about Rye and Leaven for years. She just about jumped for joy when Rye and Leaven both decided on schools that were 'big names' around here, schools everyone knows but never go to because they're so expensive. Granted, we get decent financial aid – not that my mother has any notion of paying for any of our colleges – but they're far away and most kids around here like to stay local. So, yes, I thought about how I wanted to do something for myself for a change, instead of doing it for her.

"I just don't see the point of going somewhere like that if I don't know what I want to do," I tell her.

"Oh, don't feed me that, Peeta," she says. "You want to go because you'll be close to _her_!"

That's another reason, but not one I'm going to admit. "Have you ever thought that maybe I didn't want to go that far away from home?"

My mother snorts. "Please, why would you want to stay _here_?"

"I know you don't, but I like Miner Falls!" We're both yelling now and my father is washing the dishes trying to keep his nose out of it. He knows he started this mess. He doesn't want to add hurt to injury.

"You're just like your father," she says, throwing her hands in the air. "What? Are you going to come back and run the bakery one day?"

I smirk. "Maybe."

"Lord help us all, Peeta!" she cries. "If you're going to do nothing with your life, you might as well just stay here. End up like Cray working the filling station and reading filthy magazines!"

And then, when it's too much to even look at me, she leaves the room and slams the door behind her. My father turns around and shakes his head, but he's fighting a smile. "You wicked child," he says, a soft chuckle laced in his voice.

"Spawn of the devil."

He laughs at that. "To her, you are," he says, motioning to himself, the devil incarnated. "But, I suppose she's dealt with her fair share of disappointment. She lives vicariously through you boys, so she wants for you what she wants for herself."

"It's not what _I_ want, though," I tell him.

He nods, understanding. My father was never one to leave Miner Falls either. He didn't even go to college, just taking over the bakery from my grandfather. "Tell me honestly," he says, putting the towel down on the counter after drying his hands. "You're not just applying to be by Katniss, right?"

I shake my head and tell him the truth. "I meant what I said. I don't want to go far from home but, to be honest, the campus being near her is a bonus," I say. "But, that's not all I'm thinking about. It's a big school with lots of options and I _don't _know what I want to do."

"Good." He leans down and kisses the top of my head like he would do when I was younger. I think he'll probably still be doing it when I'm forty. He ruffles my hair and then goes into the living room. I hear him sit in his recliner, pulling a book up no doubt.

I have a rough draft of my college essay due tomorrow so I go into the small study off the kitchen where the computer is and shift through the bakery notes my mother has sprawled over the desk. I sit at the screen looking at the six essay questions on the common app before an idea strikes me.

And, for the first time in three weeks, I'll have something for my teacher to read.

* * *

I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that Prim rules the roost at her school's Relay for Life event. It takes place the first Friday of October and, after she's done helping people register, she goes and visits with people. She sits at the Survivor's table for a few minutes, listening to their stories and hugging an older woman with a scarf wrapped around her head. She plays patty cake with a little girl on another team. She helps line the track with luminaries. I watch as she sits next to Rory Hawthorne as they place a luminary for his brother around the track and she nudges his shoulder in support but says nothing because there is nothing she can say.

His brother is gone. Her sister is still here.

Our team is an odd group of people. Haymitch is _team captain_ but he spends most of his night on his cellphone calling the house. Sae, their next door neighbor who basically took him on as a son when he got landed with Katniss and Prim by default, is the woman who cooks for them when Katniss is sick and is staying with her tonight while we walk all night. However, this is the first time since April that Haymitch hasn't been within a voice's reach of Katniss for more than an hour and he's not doing well with the whole not checking in that Sae made him promise. Cinna's been attempting to keep him otherwise occupied, but I've seen him sneak off to call the house, asking to speak to Katniss.

_Are you okay? Are you eating? Do you need anything?_

It must be hard for him.

Prim bounces around the track while she walks, moving from person to person, introducing herself to people she doesn't already know. She and Rue walk with Rory, who's not on our team, for a lap or two and they even attempt to race-walk.

Cinna, Octavia, and a man with obnoxiously orange corkscrew curls named Flavius round out our team. I know Cinna and Octavia from the hospital because they're Katniss's favorite nurses. Flavius is someone I've never met before and he introduces himself as Katniss's hair stylist. He also helps his mother run a donation center for knitted and crocheted hats for kids with cancer. I think of Katniss's crocheted hat with the floppy flower in her scrapbook pictures and have a feeling it came from there, even though he doesn't say it.

Around four in the morning, Prim and I are doing laps together while the rest of our crew is in the tents taking some long overdue naps. In the dark of the night, the stars and the luminaries the only lights to guide us, I feel peace. It's not silent. People talk as they walk, sleep deprived for a good cause, but the speech is subdued. The early morning dawn will rise soon, leaving a pink haze over the track. The hope of a morning after a dark night.

It is then that I realize its hope that draws us to continue. The hope of another day. The hope of a remission. The hope of a future where we won't be scared. Hope, an emotion so resilient, it is the only thing stronger than our fear of the unknown.

* * *

Katniss's blood work, which comes in with her blasts at four percent, is treated tentatively. No one wants to celebrate too soon. I'm sitting with her on the couch watching television when Haymitch gets the call from Dr. Heavensbee himself. I watch for the correct reaction. Prim squeals. Haymitch smiles. I can't help the grin spreading over my face. But Katniss doesn't look convinced. She almost looks as if she's being tricked.

But, it is a victory. The graft did what it was supposed to do. For the moment, at least, she's cancer-free.

She visits Flavius, who I come to realize specializes in the hair care of cancer patients, for scalp treatments. Her treatments made her scalp raw and dry, so Flavius gives her special treatments of his own to return her skin to a healthy state. Until her hair starts to grow again, she wears a hat his mother crocheted specifically for her, especially when she goes outside. A rich hunter green yarn that's incredibly soft and a white fabric flower knitted on.

"A katniss flower," she says when I ask if she knows what it is.

Of course.

She's still required to make daily visits to PCH. Some days she needs transfusions to keep her levels of blood cells at the right numbers. Some days her blood work is fine and she comes home exhausted nonetheless after her work with Finnick and Dr. Paylor. The two work together as her nerves come back. She hasn't walked more than a few minutes here or there in a long time. Finnick pushes her as much as he can, sometimes with Johanna's help, because he wants her walking again without a walker by Christmas. However, it's an optimistic goal. I find myself in the same position Katniss found herself in a year prior – sitting in a chair encouraging her, just as she did to me. She gets frustrated easily, something Finnick seems to know well.

He tells me the story of how she fell on her face when he was first working with her all those years ago after Katniss gives him permission. It was after her parents died and she had been in the ICU. The infection she had made her weak both mentally and physically. Finnick, right out of college, was assigned to work with her.

"I think it was a test," he says with a laugh as we watch Johanna help Katniss along the parallel bars. "See if I could handle her. She was a little spitfire, even back then. I told her she wasn't strong enough to walk and she either didn't believe me or didn't care, because she stood up from her hospital bed and slammed her face into the table. Haymitch was not pleased with her."

I can only imagine.

"I hated working with her at first," he says. Johanna and Katniss are getting increasingly frustrated with each other so we know Finnick has to head over soon to intervene. "But, she grows on you pretty quickly."

"You can say that again," I tell him, remembering the very first time I saw her, sitting on the porch. I thought I had fallen in love just seeing her and, the more I spent time with her, the more I fell.

I go with her to rehab everyday, just as she did with me, to give Haymitch a much-needed break and we fall into a comfortable pattern. We talk about safe topics – Prim's first upper school dance, my volunteering, Haymitch's geese. We don't talk about the future. She doesn't ask me about college or what I want to do. In return, I try to stay away from bringing up questions about that. She's obviously uneasy talking about the future, so I don't push her, and therefore we stay away.

Prim and Rue, on the other hand, want to know every last detail of my future endeavors. They talk to me like I hold some magical key to life planning. Tuesdays are the only days I don't go with Katniss because I volunteer at the coloring table. A few of the volunteers are gone – Cato, Marvel, Clove, and Thresh have all gone off to college – and in their places are new faces I have yet to learn. But, the coloring table stays the same with me and Rue and sometimes Prim, and I still drive Prim home after our shifts.

They ask about my essay. They ask about the common app. They ask about which schools I'm applying to and which ones I really want to be accepted at. At thirteen (and a half, Rue insists) they're already getting antsy about it and I just tell them to slow down. I wish I wasn't at this point yet.

When Prim asks to see my essay one day, I falter for a moment but give it to her anyway. It's only fair.

For my essay, I answered option three: indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence. And everyone who finds out I answered that one asks the same thing. Did I write about Katniss? The answer is yes and no. I didn't write specifically about Katniss. I wrote about Haymitch and, to write about him, I have to talk about her. Instead, I focused on what I learned watching Haymitch, a man who broke and picked up the pieces to care about two little girls who weren't his. Life doesn't stop. We have to be adaptable and willing to change. I'm sure, if someone had asked Haymitch after he won an Olympic medal if this is what his life would be like in twenty years, he would have laughed in the reporter's face. I don't know what the future holds for me. I don't even know what I want my major to be. But I know, whatever happens, I'll be okay.

Prim hands it back with tears in her eyes. It's the only time I've ever seen her speechless, so I'd like to take that as a good sign.

The state university system operates on rolling admissions, so I can apply anytime after December first. I get my acceptance letter no less than three weeks after I apply, so I don't even need to send out any more applications. I do send out one more to appease my mother, to the school Rye went to, and therefore, when I go to State, she can use the other school as a name for impressions. My father's excited when I tell him I'm staying close. Prim and Rue as well are thrilled that they'll still continue to see me. I don't dare bring it up with Katniss. I don't know how she'd react.

So, it completely surprises me when, out of the blue, she mentions college.

"Have you got in anywhere yet?" she asks at the end of March.

It's the first real conversation we've had in months, really. It's almost been as if she was keeping me at arm's length, like she had been before she relapsed. Our old game of one step forward, two steps back, always too afraid to get close. I sputter a bit when she asks, to be honest, because it's not what I had been expecting at all. The television plays a movie quietly in the background, but I can't hear anything because I'm too focused on her stare.

I shrug. "I'm going to State."

Her eyes widen in shock. She's wearing her hat despite the fact that I know her hair is growing in. Baring any sort of infection between now and April second, they've scheduled a surgery to remove her central line. Her blood work comes back perfect. Dr. Heavensbee is thrilled with her progress, but she still has appointments nearly every day.

She had a four-week temper tantrum where she wouldn't talk to anyone when she found out it was Prim's stem cells.

"Why?" she spits out. "Prim said you were really smart."

"I can't be smart and go to State?"

She recoils at my question and shakes her head. "That's not what I meant," she mutters. She's never been good with words. "It's just…I thought you'd leave. You know, see the world?"

"My world is right here," I tell her. It's risky. Daring, even. But I say it while looking directly into her eyes, the pale gray orbs that can't tell a lie.

She bites her lip. She blinks rapidly. She spins around so I can't see her eyes. I watch her as we sit in silence, the movie long since forgotten but playing background noise for us. She takes a few deep breaths and looks at her hands. I know exactly what she's looking at. Her palms are scarred from the graft-versus-host disease. It's a permanent side effect, a lifelong reminder of the torture she's been through to just survive.

I clear my throat and point to a scar on my forearm. "I got this when I first started working with the ovens," I tell her. She looks over to see what I'm talking about and her eyes go to the dark and morphed skin. "I'm kind of a daydreamer. Burned two loaves of bread. I tried to get them out before they were destroyed and whacked my arm right on the side of the oven."

She doesn't say anything, so I push on hoping I'm doing the right thing. I point to my eyebrow. "This one was stupid. Hersh, Delly, and I were playing duck-duck-goose in the house. I ran into the coffee table and had to get three stitches. My eyebrow will never grow right again. They'll always be mismatched."

I finally get a slight giggle and I reach forward, taking her hand. "We all have scars, Katniss," I say. "They're nothing to be ashamed of. They make us human."

She looks down to where my thumb is caressing her palm. "Why did I get to live?" she asks.

"I don't know," I tell her. With Katniss, honesty is the only way to go. She looks up at me and our eyes meet before I continue. "But I'm glad you did."

She turns back to the movie and her voice is so quiet, I nearly miss her say, "Thank you." I want to tell her that she doesn't need to thank me, but I'm too focused on the fact that I'm still holding her hand and she isn't making any indication of pulling it back.

* * *

My mother doesn't speak to me for a week when I get accepted to the college Rye goes to and decline the offer. Once she finally starts speaking to me again, all we do is yell at each other. My father tries, but there's really no stopping her. She tells me I'm ruining my life for a girl, but I don't think so. It's not as if Katniss is the only factor in my decision. I maintain my argument that I don't want to go too far from home and tell her I'm not going to be her little puppet anymore. She doesn't take well to that and I sleep in the truck that night.

I'm going to college. That's better than half the kids at our high school. I wish she would just see that it doesn't matter where I go as long as I'm happy.

My father's thrilled though. He loves watching State football on the television and now he has an excuse to go to a game.

I play baseball in the spring. It takes away from my time with Katniss, but I have to do something to make my mother stop yelling. I honestly don't care, but it's affecting my father and that makes me feel terrible. Besides, my dad always liked watching us play. Our team does miserably, just as it always does, but we do win a game here or there. When we play the team from Old Orchard, Rue and Prim come to watch. I find them in the stands easily while I'm in my position on the field, even offering a wave during warm-ups. Rue waves back and Prim smiles, pointing down. I follow her pointing motions with my eyes and nearly stop dead when I see Katniss standing against the fence with Haymitch.

When we huddle at the pitcher's mound, Hersh keeps me there a moment longer after the rest of the infield has gone back. "Don't mess up," he says, winking before laughing when I punch his non-throwing arm.

We lose. But it doesn't matter because Katniss comes up to me after the game before we load the buses. I can see my dad standing with Prim, Rue, and Haymitch. I'm flabbergasted that she's here, actually. She doesn't go far from home. She's embarrassed about her hair, so she wears her hat even in May, and her immune system is still delicate. She can walk on her own for decent lengths of time, but her feet tire quickly and Haymitch, I notice, has her walker.

"Hey," I say, throwing my bag over my shoulder when she comes up.

"You suck," she says in lieu of greeting.

I can't help it. I burst into laughter. "Why thank you," I joke. "I can't be good at everything."

"I guess not." She looks down at her feet and then back up at me. We stand there for a minute, but the bus is loading and I know I have to head back soon. So, I lean down and press my lips to her forehead, which is covered by her hat, but it gets my point across. She looks almost nervous, and it's then that I notice her playing with something around her neck.

The pearl ring.

"Thanks for coming," I tell her. "I'll try to get a hit next time."

I'm rewarded just the way I wanted. Katniss nods and laughs slightly. "Are you coming around the house for my birthday?" she asks, almost shyly.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I say. "But, uh, I don't think I can get you a gift to top the last one."

She shakes her head. "I don't want a gift," she says. "I just want you to be there."

"Okay."

"Peeta! I want to go home!" Hersh shouts out the window of the bus. I turn to see my entire team watching our interaction, which I know is going to make Katniss skittish. When I turn around she has her arms wrapped around her and she's tense, so I just smile and unfold her arms. Since she's looking at me, her eyes telling me she's at ease, I take a dare. I lean down and kiss her cheek.

"I'll see you soon," I say before turning around and running to the bus before they can scream something that will make her run. I'm greeted with a bunch of wolf whistles to which I can only roll my eyes. "Y'all are just jealous!" I laugh, pointing around as I sit next to Hersh.

He shakes his head. "You know you're crazy right?"

I look passed him out the window to where Katniss is now standing with Prim and Rue, still playing with the pearl ring. I smile. "You have to be a little crazy to be sane, sometimes."

"Yeah," he laughs. "Crazy about Katniss Everdeen."

I don't deny it.

* * *

I guess you can say we're growing together.

Katniss is literally growing before our eyes. Her hair is growing. She's gaining weight. She finally starts looking healthy again. But, we're both growing in a different way too. I'd like to think I'm growing up emotionally. I've already fallen in love, but I'm learning just what it means to be in love, to know that I'd do anything for her. I'd also like to think that she's possibly cracking some of her walls in order to let me in.

Her birthday has a lot of pomp and circumstance – everything she hates. The party food isn't much. She's still restricted with so many ingredients that we have only dietician-approved foods. No cake and ice cream, but no one seems to mind. Haymitch and Prim have seemingly invited everyone who knows her. Cinna comes, as does Flavius and his mother. Dr. Heavensbee even makes a stop in to see her and tell her he's proud of her. Sae, their cook and all-but-adopted grandmother, is working with Prim to lay things out.

And, then there are the Hawthornes.

I'm not proud of it, but I find myself watching them. I don't know if I'd be able to do it, go to a celebration of someone else's life if one of my brothers had died, but I guess they're a lot stronger than me. Mrs. Hawthorne gives Katniss a hug. Posy latches herself to Katniss's legs, only to let go when she sees Prim. There is another boy besides Rory – Vick – who tries to keep his sister tame. Mr. Hawthorne speaks with Haymitch.

"You have a guardian angel," Rory tells her.

Katniss smiles and lets her eyes flicker to me. "I have a couple," she tells him, turning back.

"I'm glad you're okay, Katniss," he says. He stands up from the couch. "I don't know if I could lose you too."

"I'm not going anywhere yet, Rory."

I sit with her on the couch just as Posy decides to make her appearance. She leaps up, climbing the furniture to sit on my lap. "I know you!" she says, poking my cheek. Katniss laughs as I take her finger and gently move it. "You work at the coloring table with Rue!"

"Hey, Posy," Katniss says. Posy turns. "Thank you."

"For what?" she asks. But, before Katniss can think to answer, Posy gets distracted and she starts running to Prim and Rory who are talking in the dining room.

I smile and turn to Katniss. "I guess I was wrong," I say. "You did get to thank her for drawing the picture."

She smiles and I take a folder I had hidden on the coffee table. She eyes me for a minute. "I got you a present," I tell her. She starts to protest, insisting she told me that she didn't want me to get her one, but I continue. "I figured, I couldn't top last year's, so…"

It took me forever to finish, but I did. I pull the picture out of the folder and hand it to her. It's the picture I started drawing when Katniss went to the ER the first time with infection, the picture of our time on the roof. Katniss is huddled in her blanket, my arms wrapped around her like a protective field.

"Sorry, I didn't put it in a frame again, but –"

"No," she says. "This one's going in my memory book."

We don't get a moment alone for the rest of the party, but I keep watching her smile all day. It's the most incredible thing. Not a scowl. Not a blank face. A smile. A true genuine smile.

* * *

When, in brief passing, I mention that I'm not going to my prom, Prim glares at me.

"It's prom!" she shouts in the truck as I drive her home after volunteering on Tuesday. "You have to go to your prom! If it's because you don't have a date, then you can ask _Katniss_!"

"Do you know your sister at all?" I ask. "Asking Katniss to go to the prom would be like asking you to go hunting. A big crowded room with lots of people she doesn't know? She'd have absolutely no fun and I'm sure heels and her feet don't mix."

Prim shakes her head. "You could still ask."

"I'm not asking her."

She huffs and we stop outside her house. She looks for a moment and then turns to me. "I'm going to ask her."

It takes me a minute to figure out what she means and by the time I do she's already at the door, sprinting to get to Katniss before me. I swear under my breath and run as fast as I can, hoping to intercept her. I don't. Katniss is sitting the couch in the living room, staring at Prim with wide eyes, when I get there.

"Katniss, it would be so much fun," Prim says. "You won't go to any other prom and I saw a dress downtown you could wear!"

"Prim," I say. She turns and I jerk my head. "I got it from here."

She sighs and walks out of the room so I can take her spot on the couch. "I'm sorry," I say. "I mentioned I wasn't going to prom and Prim –"

"Why are you not going?" Katniss interjects.

I let out a breath. Do I tell her the real reason or do I tell her that I hate dancing. I go with honesty. "I don't want to go without you," I tell her. "And I'm not going to make you go because I could honestly not care less about prom. I would rather spend my time with you doing whatever you're comfortable doing. If that's lounging around watching movies, that's fine. I don't care. I just want to be with you."

She looks completely stunned. "You would skip your prom for me?" I nod my head and she shakes hers. "You are…"

"Pathetic."

She shakes her head. "Good. Such a good person." She closes her eyes and sighs. "Okay, I'll go."

"What?" I ask. I never know what's going to come out of her mouth.

She's fighting some inner battle. "I'll go. You've sacrificed so much for me this passed year, more than a year. It's time I pay you back. I don't know how much dancing I can do, but if you need a date, I guess…" Then she turns and pinches my cheek. "Besides, you need to have those stupid prom pictures to show your kids one day. Then you can say that's the weird girl I took to prom."

Or, I could tell them that it's their mother. But I don't say that. That sounds creepy even in my head.

Prim squeals outside the door of the living room.

There is absolutely no way she is going to be comfortable going to a prom, so in the weeks leading up to it, I think of something else. I know it's a trick, but I'd rather her be comfortable than miserable, so I don't let anyone in on it except Haymitch. He shakes his head when I tell him, saying that I know her better than she knows herself.

I still rent a tux with the money I've saved working at the bakery so it doesn't fool her. I buy a corsage to bring to her house. When I knock on the door, Prim is holding a fancy camera and she nearly screams in excitement. "I'll go get her," she says, sprinting up the stairs.

Haymitch rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his scotch. "She's going to be so excited when she finds out what you have planned."

I let out a breath. "I was kind of worried she'd get excited to go to the actual dance."

He lets out a laugh. "Are you kidding?" he asks. "That girl's been panicking all morning."

Prim comes down the stairs. "She's coming!" she shouts. Then, sweet little Prim turns into a drill sergeant. "Peeta, come stand over here! I want to get a picture of your reaction."

I roll my eyes but humor her. And I'm glad I did. Katniss looks absolutely beautiful. The dress was made for her, a deep red fabric that sways as she walks down the stairs. I knew it was red – Prim told me so I could order a matching vest with my tux – but I didn't think it would make my breath catch. She looks like fire, the girl on fire, but I don't feel scared like I am in my nightmares. No, this dress is not threatening to engulf her in a fiery terror. She has tamed the fire around her and she could not be any more stunning in it. She has a light yellow crocheted hat that has no flower. And, as if I needed anything else to make me choke, around her neck is the pearl ring.

"Sorry I can't wear heels," she says when she gets to me.

My mouth doesn't work for a minute. "You're beautiful."

She blushes the same color as her dress and the sounds of Prim's camera flash enters my ear for the first time. I had forgotten she was there. Prim instructs us on how to stand, where to stand, and insists on certain poses. Right before we leave, Katniss walks to Haymitch and he kisses her forehead.

"Never thought I'd see you in a fancy dress, sweetheart," he says.

"Don't get used to it," she fires back.

Prim giggles. "The next one will be white," she sings. Katniss either doesn't hear or chooses to ignore it.

We drive in silence, listening to the radio, Katniss drumming her fingers on her thigh. After I miss the turn to Miner Falls she gets suspicious but we still don't speak. I pull off about four miles away from the town center and veer the truck into the woods, stopping when it can go no farther. She raises an eyebrow at me but all I do is smile.

"I promise, I'm not kidnapping you," I tell her.

"You said that once before," she reminds me, remembering our night on the roof of the hospital for her birthday.

I get out of the truck and walk around to her door, opening it up and lifting her out. She squeals and wraps her arms around my neck, insisting that she can walk, but I carry her anyway. It's a decent mile hike, so it takes longer carrying her than it usually does alone, but finally we make it to the reservoir that gives the town it's water supply. It's turned into a swimming hole in the summer, although the county has put up a fence trying to stop it, but we'd rather boil our water than lose our only lake. There's a door to the fence that used to be locked, but now it never is. Tonight, like always, the door is unlocked.

"Wow," she says, her eyes scanning the water.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" I ask. She turns to find me staring at her so she rolls her eyes. I set her down on the blanket I set up earlier that day and sit down beside her.

"I thought we were going to prom," she says. It's amazing how much more comfortable she is here than she was in the truck when she thought we were going to the dance.

I shrug. "I told you before that I don't care about going to prom. I just want to be with you."

"You tricked me," she says. "I was doing something for you for once!"

"You are doing something for me," I tell her. "You're here."

We listen to the water ripple. We look up at the stars. I put my jacket over her and we lay down, Katniss's head on my chest and my arms around her. We just talk. She points out Orion's belt in the sky, a constellation her father used to point out to her. I tell her I'd barely be able to find the little dipper. Her laugh echoes in the woods, her body completely relaxed against me.

I've never felt more at home.

We end up falling asleep it's so peaceful. It's warm enough that we're not cold but it's not too warm that the bugs are out. It truly is the perfect night. No prom could ever match it.

I wake up when she stiffens in my arms and starts mumbling, so I shake her awake before any terrifying nightmare can start. It's so dark I can barely see her, but I know she's looking at me.

"You're alive, real or not real?" she asks, reaching forward to press her hand on my cheek. She misses and finds my nose, but she moves her hand over my face until she's found the spot she's looking for.

"Real, Katniss. It was just a nightmare."

I can feel her nod in the dark, her entire body shaking with the vigor of her head's movement. With a glance down at my watch, I can see that it's nearly eleven thirty and it's time to get her home. I lift her up and walk her out, leaving the blanket for whoever comes to the reservoir next. Katniss presses her face to my chest until we get to the truck and I let her down.

She slides down the length of my body until she's standing. She wraps her arms around my waist and keeps her head to my chest. I kiss the top of her hat and then she looks up, withdrawing her arms from my waist. I'm sure I've done something wrong, but apparently, I haven't.

She reaches for me, her hands on my neck, and pulls me down to her.

I've kissed girls before so it's not as if I don't know what to expect. It's just that I'm so surprised I can't think straight. It takes me a minute to kiss her back. But, I do. I press her lightly against the truck and relish the fact that this is real. I am kissing Katniss Everdeen. And it's better than I could have ever imagined.

When we pull apart she draws in a shaky breath. "Peeta," she says. "I'm scared."

"I know." This is everything she never wanted. But, sometimes, love finds us in places we never expect, like porches in state capitols where a girl is humming with the birds and in woods against old pickup trucks. "We'll go slow."

She smiles and nods, so I take her hand and kiss her palm, right on the scar she hates so much. But, instead of scowling, she gasps a little and looks up at me. When she does, she's smiling even more.

* * *

I like kissing Katniss Everdeen.

Given how much we do, I think she likes kissing me too. I spend my entire summer with her, minus the days I have to work at the bakery. Sometimes I bring her and Prim down. She'll sit watching me – distracting me is more like it – and Prim becomes the daughter my father was supposed to get when he got me. He teaches her everything he knows. It's funny to watch them work together. I'm pretty sure he'd offer her a job if she had a license.

On hot summer days, we pull out a blanket and park the truck, just sitting and talking (and kissing too) until the sun goes down. I didn't think it was possible, but I fall even more in love with her every day.

We're not perfect. Not in the slightest. We argue about stupid things but we make up eventually. I help her with her schoolwork some days. Because of the year she's had, she took a break from her studies. Finnick's wife Annie, her tutor, comes by during the summer to catch her up so in September she can get to work on her senior workload. Haymitch wants her to take the homeschool test and go to college, but Katniss is still unable to think that far in the future.

Her hair is long enough by the end of August that she no longer feels like she needs to wear her hat. August is also the month I pick her up and notice the pearl ring is no longer around her neck. She sees me looking and lifts her hand.

"I had it sized," she says. "I figured, a ring is meant to be worn on a finger, right?"

I lean over and kiss her. We only stop when a loud banging noise startles us. Haymitch is sitting on the porch with a bag of apples from the store and one has left a mark on the hood of the truck. Katniss shouts out that he's insufferable.

"I don't want to see you sticking your tongue down the boy's throat!" he shouts back, but he's smiling as he does it. He never thought he'd see her happy like this. I'm sure he had been preparing himself for the worst.

We live for moments. Stolen moments, like when she shows up outside my lecture hall on Fridays without telling me. Planned moments, like when I drop Prim off on Tuesdays after volunteering, which – since I'm still in the capitol – I can still do. We have telephone conversations in the middle of the night when she wakes up from a nightmare and needs to hear my voice. I've found myself in the dorm hallway more than a few times telling her that everything is okay. She asks me questions, real or not real, and I insist that yes I'm safe, no I'm not dying, and I am alive, real.

A year goes by so quickly. It's hard to believe that it's been two years since her relapse was diagnosed. But, by her birthday, she can braid her hair again. She's back to a normal weight. The symptoms of her neuropathy are completely gone. She can run. We chase each other around in the warm spring.

It's on my last day of school, having taken my last final, that I find her sitting outside the lecture hall on a bench with a single dandelion in her hand. I adjust the backpack on my shoulder and walk to her. She's coming here next year, so this can be a daily occurrence.

"How did it go?" she asks.

"I think it went well," I say. This was the final I've been dreading most of all. I hadn't seen her in a week I'd been studying so hard. But, I think the studying paid off and now we have all summer again.

"That's good," she says, holding the dandelion out to me. I take her whole hand instead and pull her up to me, wrapping my arms around her.

"I've missed you," I tell her.

She steps back and blurts it out. "I love you."

It doesn't click. It takes me a minute to realize what she's saying. Katniss Everdeen, the self-professed nonbeliever, loves me. I don't know if it was planned or not – the way she's looking at me in shock herself makes me believe the latter – but for her to say it means it must be real. Katniss doesn't lie. She can't. It's physically impossible for her and her beautiful gray eyes that show her emotion. So, when I look into them and see truth, I do all but jump for joy.

"You love me, real or not real?" I ask.

She smiles. "Real."

I lift her into my arms and twirl her around. We have a long journey ahead of us. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, she could go to Dr. Heavensbee and find out that she's relapsed again, but none of that matters in this moment. Today she's not sick. It's almost a year and a half since she's been cancer-free. She still has nightmares. She still doesn't like to think too far into the future, not wanting to jinx herself. I still have nightmares too. But we deal with it together.

One day I'm going to marry her. She doesn't know it yet, but I think she'll be okay with it. Maybe one day we'll have children of our own. We'll have a house full of love and cake batter, Katniss's terrible cooking skills and my inability to say no to anything she asks for. But all of that is in the future. Today, we're nineteen and have the world at our feet. We play a game of real or not real to ground us.

But there are much worse games to play.

* * *

_Thank you from the bottom of my heart for everyone who reviewed, favorited, alerted, and will review in the future. You all gave me the strength to get this done right. Mockingjay was my least favorite of the books, and the one with the least amount of quotes that stuck out to me, and so it was hard to get this chapter written with the right amount of parallels. This part was the one I was most worried about because I didn't parallel Peeta's hijacking, which is just a key part of the third book. However, I toyed with the idea of him losing his memory and it just didn't work to my liking. He was being tortured enough, in my opinion. Also, as some of you might have caught, I gave Mr. Hawthorne a reprieve. After losing Gale, I just couldn't take him away too. So, I figured he died in a mine collapse that didn't happen, so I kept him around to show a different family structure than Katniss's parents. I used the Everdeens to look into a relationship that loses affection when they have an ill child and thought that the Hawthornes would be the opposite, just as Hazelle and Mrs. Everdeen are opposite in the book. So, I kept Mr. Hawthorne around and, although I didn't expressly put it into the storyline (it just would have been too much) I wanted you all to know my thought process behind that change._

_Also, ElsterBird asked a question that I answered for her in a PM and, since I figure some of you may have the same question, I'll answer it here. She wanted to know why Haymitch didn't recognize Hersh Donner in Part II when he brought Peeta to the hospital. For one, Katniss was being diagnosed with a relapse. His world was changing. He wasn't thinking clearly. So, yes, Hersh is Maysilee's nephew, the son of her older brother. However, as I allude in this Part, their family is somewhat dysfunctional given all the tragedy the Donner/Undersee clans have gone through. Maysilee died when Hersh was around 10/11 or so, but since Maysilee and Haymitch live in the capitol while the rest of her family lives in Miner Falls, he didn't see her much. And, after Madge died when she and Hersh were seven, the families sort of drifted. This is why Haymitch, in Part II, doesn't recognize Hersh. He doesn't introduce himself, so Haymitch, who has never really known him all too well, wouldn't even think of it. Also, his late wife, as been alluded previously, is a poor subject for him (Katniss mentions that he nearly killed himself after her passing in Part II) so he's not actively looking for signs of her._

_I hope that all of you enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I did so much research on this, but I know some of it is probably inaccurate, so take that with a grain of salt. Also, I don't use a beta, so all the mistakes are my fault. _

_So, even though I'm going to try and thank all of you personally for reviews this chapter, I want to express my gratitude for everyone who made it to the end. Thank you all taking this ride with me. It has been a pleasure to share Peeta's forty-five minute drives in his old Ford with you all this time ;)_


	4. Author's Note

Hey everyone! I just thought I'd let everyone who is on alert for this story know that I've posted a continuation of the Do Not Go Gentle universe. It's called _They Shall Not Break_ and I'd love it if you guys checked it out. Thanks for your interest!


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